Child policy expert to speak on the effects of neighborhoods on children Dec. 1
at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies

November 2004

Contact: Sallie Barker, Georgia Health Policy Center, 404-463-9337, sbarker@gsu.edu or Brad Dixon, University Relations, 404-651-3575,
braddixon@gsu.edu

Policy expert to discuss effect of neighborhoods on children

ATLANTA, Ga. – The degree to which neighborhood conditions affect children’s well-being will be the topic of a Dec. 1 lecture in the Child Policy Speaker Series at Georgia State University.

Greg Duncan, the Edwina S. Tarry professor of education and social policy at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University, will speak at 3 p.m. in Georgia State's Andrew Young School of Policy Studies building at 14 Marietta St. (7th floor seminar room). His lecture, titled “Neighborhoods and Child Well-Being: Moving to Opportunity Demonstration Project,” is free and open to the public.

Duncan will discuss whether changes in neighborhood environments made possible by housing vouchers improve the developmental outcomes of poor children. Around 1.6 million low-income families now receive financial subsidies through such services as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Section 8 program, enabling them to move to private-market housing.

Prior to joining Northwestern’s faculty in 1995, Duncan served as principal investigator of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics project at the University of Michigan for 13 years. He has published extensively on issues of income distribution, child poverty and welfare dependence.

Sponsored by the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, the Child Policy Speaker Series is a program of the Georgia Health Policy Center. Established in 1995 at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, the center offers a community-based, multidisciplinary approach to improving health status at the community level. For more information, contact Sallie Barker at 404-651-3104 or sbarker@gsu.edu or visit www.gsu.edu/ghpc.