Neighbourhood does matter!-Socio-structural neighbourhood characteristics and educational success

The discontinuation of social housing projects has lead to increasing tendencies of social segregation in German cities over the past decades. American and recently also European research has frequently shown that the increasing social segregation of neighbourhoods produces contextual effects on the educational success of children and youths living in the respective neighbourhoods. This contribution draws on data from the Berlin ELEMENT-study to investigate whether socio-cultural neighbourhood characteristics have an effect on the competence development of elementary school children in the time span between 4th and 6th grade. Results indicate that-apart from individual composition effects-living in a socially deprived neighbourhood does not have a negative effect on student's competence development. On the other hand living in a privileged neighbourhood does in fact have a positive effect on student's competence development-independently of composition effects. Therefore, educational inequalities are indeed intensified by neighbourhood effects, but not in the way that deprived neighbourhoods have a negative effect on the competence development of students living in them but rather in the way that living in a neighbourhood characterized by a favourable social structure positively affects student's competence development.