Faculty of Education - Theses

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Subject: England × Subject: Community development × Type: Masters Research thesis ×

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    Population mobility effects in the evaluation of area-based programs
    Feldman, Peter Charles Michael ( 2008)
    Social interventions that aim to improve the material conditions, well-being and prospects of people who live in disadvantaged neighbourhoods have demonstrated little success in improving the relative disadvantage of residents. However, due to the complex nature of these programs, it is also possible that they have not been evaluated adequately. Therefore, two recent, area-based programs - New Deal for Communities in the United Kingdom, and Neighbourhood Renewal in Victoria, Australia - were used as test cases to identify . a gap in the current state-of-the-art of area-based program evaluation. This omission was the failure to account properly for population mobility through intervention sites. Findings from the two Programs and from the literature on population mobility in disadvantaged areas indicated that: a) population turnover of 50% or more within five years was not unusual for disadvantaged neighbourhoods; b) the characteristics of people who stayed in disadvantaged areas, those who moved in, and of those who moved out, tended to be consistent between Programs and countries. `Stayers' were more likely to be older, less educated, retired and in poorer health than `inmovers' and `outmovers'. Inmovers' tended to have lower incomes and be less active economically than `outmovers', who on the whole were upwardly mobile. The failure to account properly for selective residential mobility was found to have strong potential for negative impact on the assessment of outcomes for residents, because `outmovers' took measurable Program benefits away from the neighbourhoods, while `inmovers' lowered the socio-economic profiles of the communities. A new demographic measure of `mobility status', comprising the categories of `stayer', `inmover' and `outmover', was developed from this evidence. Properly applied, the measure promises to turn the previously confounding factor of population mobility into a tool of change measurement in the evaluation of areabased programs.