Do you remember the triple bottom line, a term invented to expand the bottom line? The bottom line was about money: the triple bottom line added social and environmental factors to the equation. Now, there’s a new triple: triple disadvantage.
Robert Sampson created triple disadvantage. He is a sociologist based at Harvard. He’s very keen on empirical evidence and lucky enough to be in a position to follow his enthusiasm. He has focussed on inequality in the United States. One of his research projects follows the lives of Chicago residents over 30 years. This started him on the path to the triple disadvantage.
Sampson’s research is place based. He builds on other research that identified disadvantaged neighbourhoods, where there are higher levels of poverty and higher proportions of Black and brown people compared to other neighbourhoods.
The triple disadvantage emerged when Sampson studied travel patterns in and out of neighbourhoods where there was high poverty. Let’s start with a hypothetical Neighbourhood ‘A’. Here’s how it works. Neighbourhood ‘A’ has a triple disadvantage when
- it has a high level of poverty,
- most of Neighbourhood A’s residents head out to other high poverty neighbourhoods for their daily activities (working, visiting, going to school, buying groceries, etc.), and
- most of the people who come to Neighbourhood ‘A’ (for the same sorts of reasons just listed) are from other high poverty neighbourhoods
This finding is important because triple disadvantaged neighbourhoods are way more likely to have high levels of crime. As well, people who are Black are 30 times more likely to live in triple disadvantaged neighbourhoods than white people.
Sampson contends that the standard answer for crime – adding more police – doesn’t help lower crime rates. Through his 30 year study of Chicago neighbourhoods, he’s been able to establish features of neighbourhoods where there are high levels of crime. Crime shows up in neighbourhoods when people don’t have a high level of connection with their neighbours. They are also unlikely to speak up when bad things happen in their neighbourhood, such as a drug deal or kids skipping school. And this applies regardless of whether a person is Black, brown or white.
The same Chicago study points to the kind of resources that will support neighbours to feel more connected with each other and their neighbourhood. Instead of police, resources should go toward lowering poverty, increasing education opportunities, improving housing conditions and increasing opportunities for social connection.
Sampson adds:
“… there’s a lot of persistent inequality. What’s important to understand both theoretically and for policymakers however, is that it’s not inherent that we have these kinds of inequalities. They are socially constructed, which means that they can be deconstructed. So yes, we have a history and legacies of inequality, but that doesn’t mean nothing can be done.
While many of Sampson’s findings are specific to Chicago, he offers interesting lines of thought for tackling persistent inequality as a structural issue. Read more in Vital City: On disadvantage, race and neighborhood vitality
