On Chicago’s Morning Answer, University of Chicago economist and 2000 Nobel laureate James Heckman pushed back on the popular notion that “zip code is destiny,” arguing that policies built on that premise misread the evidence and risk wasting money while ignoring the most powerful driver of child outcomes: parenting.
The debate traces to a widely cited study by two MIT economists that links childhood exposure to “high-opportunity” neighborhoods to better adult outcomes (education, earnings). Their findings have inspired federal and local efforts to relocate families to such areas—a $50 million federal project launched in 2022 spans cities including Los Angeles, New York, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, and Rochester, with Los Angeles alone planning to move roughly 1,950 families.
Heckman and his co-author, University of Chicago researcher Selin Dazkir, re-examined the methodology and came to a different conclusion: the observed neighborhood effects are confounded by selection and parental behavior. Put simply, the very parents who plan ahead, prioritize child well-being, and make sacrifices tend to choose safer neighborhoods and better schools in the first place—and those traits, not the new address alone, predict their children’s success.
To stress the point, the Chicago team applied a “placebo” test using the MIT approach: before the child ever experiences a new neighborhood, indicators known to forecast later outcomes—such as birth weight and birth length—are already better among families who move earlier to “better” areas. A neighborhood cannot cause higher birth length; parental choices and prenatal investments can. That pattern, Heckman argues, reveals the mechanism: proactive parenting drives both the move and the outcomes.
Heckman does not deny that environment matters. Safer blocks, higher-quality schools, and constructive peer groups help children thrive. But he cautions against attributing causal power to the move itself while abstracting away the family. He pointed to the 1990s “Moving to Opportunity” experiment: while some short-run measures (e.g., self-reported well-being) improved, long-term effects on earnings and education were limited, and program take-up was selective—again implicating parental motivation.
The policy implications are stark. First, relocation subsidies should be evaluated with designs that account for selection rather than treating movers and non-movers as interchangeable. Second, broad cash transfers (e.g., universal basic income pilots) have not produced durable gains in child outcomes in rigorous follow-ups, suggesting money alone is insufficient. Third, the highest returns are likely to come from strengthening families: evidence-based parenting supports, early childhood health and development, and programs that help caregivers navigate and make use of existing opportunities.
Heckman also underscored the cost of ignoring family effects. If policy presumes children are passive products of place, it will underinvest in the behaviors that turn environments into advantages—reading to children, consistent routines, school engagement, and protection from harmful influences. He cited the divergent trajectories of children raised in identical public housing towers as an example: some fell into violence; others flourished, often thanks to vigilant caregivers.
For cities contemplating large-scale “move to opportunity” efforts, Heckman’s critique is not a call to abandon safer streets or better schools. It is a warning against treating relocation as a silver bullet. Without parallel investments that cultivate parental capacity and engagement—and without rigorous evaluation that separates place effects from parent effects—well-intended programs will overpromise, underdeliver, and leave the root problem unsolved.