搬家能帶來健康還是財富?大綱

Moving low-income families out of poor neighborhoods doesn't help the families escape poverty, according to a new study, but it does make them healthier and happier.
一項新的研究表明，搬離貧困社區無助於低收入家庭脫貧，但卻能使他們更健康、更快樂。

In a paper published this week in the journal Science, researchers from the University of Chicago, Harvard and other institutions, studied the effects of Moving to Opportunity, an experimental federal housing program in the 1990s that offered housing vouchers to more than 2,000 low-income families so they could move from impoverished areas into mixed-income neighborhoods. A separate control group had similar demographics but didn't move to mixed-income neighborhoods with the help of vouchers.
在《科學》雜誌（Science）近期發表的一篇論文中，來自芝加哥大學（University of Chicago）、哈佛大學（Harvard）及其他機構的研究人員分析、闡述了“搬家尋找新機會”（Moving to Opportunity）項目的成效。該項目是一項施行於20世紀90年代的實驗性聯邦住房計劃，它通過向兩千多個低收入家庭提供住房補貼券來幫助他們從貧困社區搬到不同收入階層的混合社區居住。在此次研究中，對照組爲人口統計學特徵相似但沒有獲得住房補貼券幫助的家庭。

The program aimed to boost education and income, by giving mothers and their children access to better housing and schools, as well as better job opportunities and social networks. By those measures, it largely failed. Participants moved to better housing and safer neighborhoods, but they showed minimal economic or educational gains.
自從搬到郊區以後，奧利弗就開始學習，她的目標是成爲一名藥物濫用顧問。“搬家尋找新機會”項目旨在提高人們的受教育程度和收入水平，它爲母親及其孩子提供了一些途徑來獲得更舒適的住房、更優質的學校、更好的工作機會及社交網絡。然而，在這些方面，這些舉措基本沒有收到預期的效果。項目參與者的確搬進了條件更好的房子及安全性更高的社區，但他們在經濟與教育方面的獲益甚微。

But the program nonetheless had a pronounced effect on families' lives, researchers found. Participants had significantly lower rates of diabetes, extreme obesity, anxiety and stress than those who stayed behind. They were also much happier with their lives overall - something researchers said was particularly important.
儘管如此，研究人員發現，該項目在改善家庭成員生活狀況方面卻效果顯著。與留在原處未搬遷的家庭相比，項目參與者中患有糖尿病、極端肥胖與焦慮症的人數比例大幅下滑。不僅如此，搬遷的家庭對生活總體上也感到更爲滿意──研究人員稱，這一點至關重要。

'We don't see very important neighborhood effects on those two outcomes that people have focused on,' said University of Chicago economist Jens Ludwig, the study's lead author. 'But the things that people had been focused on and worried about with neighborhoods aren't the full story. Helping poor families is about a lot more than just increasing their income.'
該研究的首席作者、芝加哥大學經濟學家簡斯•路德維格（Jens Ludwig）說，“人們一直關注一個家庭所居住的社區在經濟與教育方面對於家庭的影響，但事實證明它在這兩方面影響都不是很大。人們一直以來所關注且擔心的其實並不全面，幫助貧困家庭遠不止是提高他們的收入這麼簡單。”

While moving to safer neighborhoods made a big difference in peoples' lives, however, moving to less racially segregated ones didn't. That is worrisome because even as the U.S. has become less racially segregated in recent decades, it has become economically segregated, with poor people increasingly concentrated in certain neighborhoods. From a quality-of-life standpoint, the researchers found, the increase in poverty concentration over the past 40 years has almost canceled out the gains in income among poorer Americans.
儘管搬進更安全的社區會在很大程度上改變人們的生活，但如果你搬入的地方是各種族雜居區，情況則會不同。近幾十年來，雖然美國社會的種族隔離逐漸消融，但人們又開始依照經濟狀況劃分貧富等級，越來越多的貧民聚集在某一片區，這種情況令人擔憂。研究人員發現，從生活質量上看，過去四十年來，貧困階層居住集中程度的加劇幾乎抵消了美國窮人的收入增長。

'The adverse effects on poor families from growing economic segregation basically undermines all the gains they've experienced in income,' Mr. Ludwig said.
路德維格說，“不斷擴大的貧富等級隔離現象帶給家庭的負面影響基本抵消了窮困家庭收入增長所帶來的益處。”

Sabrina Oliver's inner-city Baltimore neighborhood was so crime-ridden, she would come home to find drug dealers on her porch. Her daughter suffered from severe asthma and Ms. Oliver herself was too depressed to work. Most of all, she said, she worried about her teenage son.
塞布麗娜•奧利弗（Sabrina Oliver）原先居住在巴爾的摩市中心，這一帶的犯罪活動十分猖獗，她回家時還會在自家的門廊上撞見毒販。她的女兒患有嚴重的哮喘，奧利弗自己也消沉絕望、無法工作。但她最爲擔心的，還是處在青春期的兒子。

'I didn't want him to become friends with the neighborhood kids,' Ms. Oliver said. 'You lose your kids that way, either to death or prison.'
奧利弗說，“我不希望他和這一帶的孩子交朋友。你會因此失去你的孩子，他們的命運不是坐牢就是死。”Then three years ago, Ms. Oliver and her family were able to move to the suburbs through the Baltimore Housing Mobility Program, a nearly decade-old effort to help poor families move to better neighborhoods. Now, her son is passing his classes, her daughter's asthma has all but disappeared, and Ms. Oliver herself is working part-time and going to college to become a substance-abuse counselor. The improved housing, air and schools all have made a big difference, Ms. Oliver said, but the impact of the move goes beyond that.
三年前，奧利弗和她的家人通過巴爾的摩流動住房計劃（Baltimore Housing Mobility Program）搬到了郊區。這個項目已實施了近十年，旨在幫助貧困家庭搬入更好的社區居住。現在，奧利弗的兒子能夠跟上學校的學習了，女兒的嚴重哮喘幾乎痊癒了，而奧利弗自己也半工半讀，一邊兼職工作，一邊上大學，目標是成爲一名藥物濫用顧問。奧利弗說，良好的居住環境、優質的空氣和學校，這些都讓我們的生活有了翻天覆地的變化。但搬家的影響遠不止於此。

'You see families function in a normal way, where the parents go off to work, the kids go off to school,' she said. 'I don't think that my children will be a recipient of social services because my life has changed drastically and they see the change in me.'
奧利弗說，“你看到所有的家庭都在正常、有序地運轉：父母出門去工作，孩子們去上學。我認爲我的孩子不會淪爲社會福利機構的收容對象了，因爲我的生活徹底改變了，他們看到了我身上的變化。”

Barbara Samuels, a housing attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, which helps oversee the Baltimore program, said Ms. Oliver's story isn't unusual. 'There's kind of a sense of hopelessness, of being literally almost physically oppressed by your surroundings,' she said.
美國公民自由聯盟（American Civil Liberties Union）馬里蘭州分會的房地產律師芭芭拉•塞繆爾斯（Barbara Samuels）參與監管了巴爾的摩流動住房計劃的實施，她認爲奧利弗的經歷並不爲奇。她說，“周圍的環境會讓你產生一種無望無助、身體受壓的感覺。”

Ms. Samuels - and other experts - say Moving to Opportunity notched limited economic benefits in part because the housing vouchers were too small for families to move to truly middle-class communities with better schools. For example, under the Baltimore Housing Mobility Program, Ms. Oliver was able to leave Baltimore altogether and move to Anne Arundel County, something she couldn't have done under the Moving to Opportunity initiative.
塞繆爾斯和其他的專家都認爲，“搬家尋找新機會”只能在某種程度上讓參與者在經濟上獲益。因爲對於那些想搬進真正的中產階級社區、享受優質教育服務的家庭而言，住房補貼券只是杯水車薪。舉例來說，正是有了巴爾的摩流動住房計劃，奧利弗全家才得以從巴爾的摩市搬到安娜•阿倫德郡（Anne Arundel County），而“搬家尋找新機會”項目在這一點上根本幫不了她。

Harvard economist Lawrence Katz, one of the study's authors, agreed that most families in the study hadn't been able to move to better school districts, as initially hoped. And he said that other programs, such as ones that offer job training, have been able to boost people's earnings.
此次研究的作者之一、哈佛大學經濟學家勞倫斯•卡茨（Lawrence Katz）也認同研究對象中的大多數家庭都沒能夠如願搬進更好的學區。他說，是其它一些項目（如提供職業培訓的項目）幫助參與者提高了收入。

'Success at getting a better job really isn't about exactly where you live,' Mr. Katz said.
卡茨說，“找到一份好工作可能跟你到底住在哪兒真沒什麼關係。”

In recent years, some economists have focused on happiness and other measures of subjective well-being that aren't fully captured by traditional gauges of wealth and income. For the Science study, participants were asked to rate their happiness on a commonly used three-point scale.
近些年來，一些經濟學家一直在關注人們的快樂指數和其他一些衡量幸福感的標準，因爲像財富、收入這樣的傳統計量標尺無法全面反映人的這種感受。在論文刊發於《科學》期刊的這項研究中，工作人員就要求參與者採用常規的三分標準爲自己的幸福感打分。

Comparing those findings with past studies, the researchers found that in terms of happiness, a 13-percentage-point drop in neighborhood poverty was the equivalent of a $13,000 increase in annual income - a dramatic increase for a population with average household income of just $20,000.
與過去的調查結果相比，這一次研究人員發現，從幸福感的角度出發，社區貧困程度降低13個百分點與年收入增加13,000美元帶給人的喜悅感是一樣的。而對於家庭平均年收入僅爲20,000美元的階層來說，13,000美元的漲幅無疑是很驚人的。