Child opportunity and adult outcomes

The neighborhood where a child grows up influences not only their daily lives but also their health and wellbeing as an adult. Life expectancy and adult socioeconomic mobility, for example, vary considerably between very low- and very-high opportunity neighborhoods.

Child opportunity and life expectancy

Life expectancy at birth is a helpful way of summarizing the health of a population. It tells us how long people can expect to live when they are born. Across the 100 largest metropolitan areas, life expectancy at birth is higher with every level of neighborhood opportunity.

Use the tool below to explore the difference in life expectancy between the five Child Opportunity Levels within each metro area.

One way to summarize the extent of health inequity in a given area is through the size of the gap in life expectancy between very low- and very-high opportunity neighborhoods. We find that there is a difference of six years in life expectancy between typical residents in very low-opportunity neighborhoods (life expectancy of 76 years) and residents in very high-opportunity neighborhoods (life expectancy of 82 years). This is the same difference in life expectancy that exists between Panama (76 years) and France (82 years).  

The visualization below shows the extent to which life expectancy between very low- and very high-opportunity neighborhoods (life expectancy gap) varies by metro area. Metros at the top of the visualization have the greatest inequity. As you scroll down, the magnitude of the gap in life expectancy narrows.

The life expectancy gaps shown above typically reflect the size of the Child Opportunity Gap in a given metro. In Dayton, OH, which has a very large Opportunity Gap (82) between very low- and very high-opportunity neighborhoods, we observe a large life expectancy gap of 10.1 years. On the other hand, in Provo, UT, where the Opportunity Gap is relatively small (32), the life expectancy gap is small—only 3.1 years. We also find that several of the metros with the smallest life expectancy gaps have either very high overall opportunity (San Jose, CA) or very low overall opportunity (McAllen, TX, Visalia, CA, Modesto, CA, and Fayetteville, NC).

Child opportunity and socioeconomic mobility

Child opportunity is also strongly associated with socioeconomic mobility, or the socioeconomic standing of an adult compared to the standing of the family in which they grew up. One measure of socioeconomic mobility is the household income attained at age 35 for a child from a low-income family (defined as a family with an income at the 25th percentile of the parent income distribution).

The adult household income for children from a low-income family is positively associated with neighborhood opportunity. This means that children from equally poor families will have very different adult incomes depending on the type of neighborhood they grew up in. The graph below shows the difference in socioeconomic mobility between the five levels of neighborhood opportunity within each metro area.

Note: Income data are percentiles of the household income distribution obtained from Opportunity Insights and converted to 2022 dollars. Because source data are rounded percentiles, they have a maximum of 100 possible values, and even fewer values exist for low-income children within a particular COI Level. Therefore, presented data (median values, reflecting the typical child within a COI Level) are constrained to a limited number of values, which may be the same across several metro areas. 

One way to summarize the extent of inequity in adult socioeconomic mobility in a given area is through the size of the gap in adult household income at age 35 between very low- and very high-opportunity neighborhoods. The income attained at age 35 for a typical (median) child growing up in a low-income family varies from $34,000 in very low-opportunity neighborhoods to $52,000 in very high-opportunity neighborhoods. This means that two children from equally poor families could have very different adult incomes depending on the type of neighborhood in which they grew up.

The visualization below shows how the extent of this “socioeconomic mobility gap” varies across metro areas. Metros at the top of the visualization have the greatest gap. As you scroll down, the magnitude of the gap in socioeconomic mobility narrows.

The socioeconomic mobility gaps shown above typically reflect the size of the Child Opportunity Gap in a given metro. The Richmond, VA metro area, which has a relatively wide Child Opportunity Gap (81), also has the widest socioeconomic mobility gap of more than $27,000 (ranging from $55,000 expected income in its highest opportunity neighborhoods to $28,000 in its lowest). On the other end of the spectrum, is McAllen, TX. McAllen, which has both very low overall opportunity and a relatively small Opportunity Gap, also has a socioeconomic mobility gap of only $3,000 (ranging from $45,000 expected income in its highest opportunity neighborhoods to $42,000 in its lowest).