Dr. Lori Minnite, Associate Professor of Public Policy and Administration, will be the guest speaker at the Center for Urban Research and Education‘s last seminar of the Fall 2014 semester. Dr. Minnite will discuss “Does Concentration Worsen Poverty? The Philadelphia Case” (see below for a detailed description of the lecture). The event begins on Friday, December 12th, from 12 p.m. – 2 p.m., in the Faculty Lounge of the third floor of Armitage Hall.
Abstract:
Scholars of political incorporation understand that for African Americans, the foundation of advancement in electoral politics has been the concentration of black voters in jurisdictions where they could engage in mobilization campaigns and out-vote whites simply by virtue of their sheer numbers. At the same time, scholars of urban poverty have argued that concentration or neighborhood effects negatively impact the life chances of residents of deprived neighborhoods over and above the effects of their individual characteristics. The question is how concentration effects can be good for politics but bad for the very people who need political representation the most, the urban poor. I explore the problem using micro-data to examine shifting patterns of political participation and poverty for the City of Philadelphia since 1970.