Design Choices, Results, and Multiple Mistakes in the U.S. Experimental Desegregation Demonstration

While segregating housing in the US by race was relatively easy - demographically and sociologically - unwinding it has proven frustrating, complex, and costly. The government’s legal and political responsibility for causing segregation of the public sector stock has been well documented, while its efforts to de-segregate it have not. Moving to Opportunity was the national government’s first effort to learn how to partially unscramble the isolation of minorities and poverty using an experimental design. John Goering will discuss how this attempt was made and how it failed and why. In between, he will discuss the successes it achieved and why, for many civil & human rights advocates in the US, it is seen nonetheless as a policy failure. He has worked on the MTO experiment for over two decades, publishing two books and a number of articles. He has lectured widely on it in the US and UK.

John Goering received his doctorate in demography and sociology from Brown University and is professor of political science at the School of public affairs at Baruch College, CUNY. He has published numerous articles on urban, neighborhood, housing, and civil rights issues. His books include: Choosing a Better Life? Evaluating the Moving to Opportunity Experiment; and Moving to Opportunity: The Story of an American Story of Fighting Ghetto Poverty, Oxford University Press, 2010.