Who Leaves and Who Enters? Flow Measures of Neighborhood Change and Consequences for Neighborhood Crime

• Published date: 01 August 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00224278221088534
• Author: John R. Hipp,Alyssa W. Chamberlain
• Date: 01 August 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Who Leaves and

Who Enters? Flow

Measures of

Neighborhood

Change and

Consequences for

Neighborhood Crime

John R. Hipp

1

and Alyssa W. Chamberlain

2

Abstract

Objectives: Longitudinal studies of the relationship between neighborhood

change and changes in crime typically focus exclusively on the net level of

change in key socio-demographic characteristics. Methods: We instead pro-

pose a demographic accounting strategy that captures the composition of

neighborhood change: our measures capture which types of people are

more likely to leave, stay, or enter the neighborhood. We use data for

3,325 tracts in the Southern California region over nearly two decades

of 2000–2010 and 2010–2017 and construct f‌low measures based on

race/ethnicity; the length of residence of owners and renters; the age

1

Department of Criminology, Law and Society and Department of Sociology, University of

California, Irvine

2

School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Arizona State University

Corresponding Author:

John R. Hipp, Department of Criminology, Law and Society, University of California, Irvine,

3311 Social Ecology II, Irvine, CA 92697.

Email: john.hipp@UCI.edu

Article

Journal of Research in Crime and

Delinquency

2023, Vol. 60(5) 543–581

© The Author(s) 2022

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/00224278221088534

journals.sagepub.com/home/jrc

structure. Results: These f‌low measures improve the predictive power of

the models—implying important theoretical insights. Neighborhoods with

higher percentages of middle-aged residents who recently entered the

neighborhood exhibit larger increases in violent and property crime. The

relative stability of those in the highest crime-prone ages (aged 15–29) is

associated with the largest increases in violent and property crime. The

greater loss of Black and Asian residents decreased crime while moderate

outf‌lows of Latinos increased crime. The mobility of long- and short-term

renters was related to crime changes. Conclusions: This new technique will

likely encourage further theoretical innovation for the neighborhoods and

crime literature.

Keywords

neighborhood change, crime, demographic change

A large body of evidence demonstrates that neighborhoods with character-

istics such as concentrated disadvantage, residential instability, or racial/

ethnic heterogeneity tend to have higher levels of crime (Krivo and

Peterson 1996; Land, McCall, and Cohen 1990; Morenoff, Sampson,

and Raudenbush 2001; Rountree, Land, and Miethe 1994). This has gen-

erated interest in exploring how neighborhood change based on various

socio-demographic characteristics impacts the change in crime levels

(Kirk and Laub 2010; Kubrin and Weitzer 2003; Taub, Garth Taylor,

and Dunham 1984). Although this literature focusing on neighborhood

change is more limited, much of it builds on social disorganization

theory and posits that the net level of change in these socio-demographic

characteristics will result in higher levels of crime. While such studies are

useful for understanding the longitudinal dynamics between neighborhood

change and crime, the nearly exclusive focus on net change fails to account

for the composition of neighborhood change. As a consequence, specif‌ic

demographic processes and their implications for neighborhood outcomes

regarding neighborhood change are relatively unexplored for criminolog-

ical theory.

While the net change in the composition of a neighborhood captures the

difference in overall out-migration versus overall in-migration, more gran-

ular information on which types of people are more likely to leave, stay,

544 Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 60(5)

and enter the neighborhood can more clearly elucidate the sociodemo-

graphic drivers of crime. By capturing the f‌low of residents based on

various characteristics into and out of neighborhoods, a richer understand-

ing can be obtained of how neighborhoods change, and the subsequent

consequences of this for changes in neighborhood crime. In short, we

argue that it is important to know which residents are more or less likely

to leave a neighborhood, as well as which residents are more or less

likely to enter a neighborhood, rather than simply measuring the net

change in the neighborhood composition. We conjecture that these f‌lows

can help in understanding how rates of crime change over the period of

a decade.

Although there are various possible characteristics we could study

regarding who leaves or enters a neighborhood, we focus on three character-

istics of households that generally follow from social disorganization theory.

First, the racial/ethnic composition of a neighborhood is an important factor

in existing ecological studies of crime—whether it is because such neighbor-

hoods are perceived as being more disadvantaged as articulated by the racial

proxy hypothesis (Harris 2001) or because of the limited resources such

neighborhoods receive as noted by the racial disparities literature (Krivo

and Peterson 1996)—therefore we focus on the race/ethnicity of households

who are more likely to leave a neighborhood, or enter a neighborhood.

Second, given that homeownership and length of residence are important

components of residential stability, we study whether there are differences

in mobility patterns for short-term vs. long-term renters and owners, and

the consequences for changes in crime. Third, we study the age composition

of residents in the neighborhood. Although ecological studies of crime have

typically only focused on the presence of adolescents and younger adults—

under the hypothesis that they tend to be in the more active time period of

the age/crime curve—the presence of middle-aged adults may be important

for their ability to provide informal social control in the community

(Anderson 1999; Hurd, Zimmerman, and Reischl 2011) compared to retirees

who have less physical ability to do so and may also be more attractive

targets (Akers et al. 1987).

We explore these questions using neighborhood data for 3,325 tracts in

the Southern California region over two decades of 2000 to 2010 and 2010

to 2017 (the most recent year for which we have data). We introduce a

demographic accounting technique to capture the f‌lows of different

types of persons who either disproportionately leave or enter a neighbor-

hood, and the consequences of this for changes in crime. In so doing,

we provide a more comprehensive understanding regarding how and

Hipp and Chamberlain 545