Housing
Does Gentrification Give Children Anxiety?
Neighborhood change brings both positive and negative effects on existing residents. Among the latter: a newfound link to anxiety and depression in kids.
Neighborhoods are a powerful force in the life of a child. Kids who grow up in areas with more opportunities wind up with better mental health and economic prospects, long-term gains that guide their outcomes as adults. And children who remain in place as their neighborhoods undergo demographic shifts that bring in more higher-income residents stand to reap the opportunity benefits.
But there may be at least one health drawback to growing up amidst gentrification. In New York City, low-income children born into neighborhoods that have seen growing numbers of college-educated and affluent newcomers were more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety or depression than poor children who grew up in places that didn’t gentrify.