Measuring neighborhood investments: An examination of community choice

Community choice is a very important household decision, since it represent s an investment in community attributes that can have a significant effect on the quality of life of all household members, particularly by influencin g the future prospects of children. In this paper, we examine the housing a nd community choices of migrants to and within Los Angeles County identifie d in the 1990 5% public-use sample of the Census. Controlling for income, w e find that expenditures on housing structure are quite similar across race s. However, controlling for income, black and Hispanic households consume s ignificantly less in community attributes than white households.