Does social interaction with higher-income neighbors help lower-income residents?

Not necessarily: Many policymakers pursued mixed-income housing policies in the hope that social interactions between lower-income and higher-income residents would lead to better access to jobs or other resources for lower-income residents. The research clearly suggests that these hopes are not realistic. The Urban Institute reviewed dozens of studies of housing programs that promoted mixed-income communities and found little evidence of any meaningful social interaction between lower-income and higher-income neighbors in mixed-income developments. It also found no evidence that lower-income residents reliably benefitted from the employment connections or other “social capital” of their higher-income neighbors.* Even among members of the same income and racial groups, this kind of social interaction among neighbors appears to be rarer than is often imagined.