Collective efficacy is becoming an increasingly important concept within the social and health sciences as researchers question how the social environment of a neighborhood influences a host of individual psychological, behavioral, and health outcomes. We investigate whether ethnic as well as other dimensions of neighborhood-level diversity are associated with collective efficacy. Survey data are used to capture perceptions of neighborhood cooperation and social cohesion for 26 344 survey respondents in southeast Pennsylvania; US Census data are used to capture neighborhood concentrated disadvantage and residential mobility, as well as diversity along a range of dimensions, including ethnicity, birthplace, household type, occupation, income, and educational attainment. Multilevel modeling is employed to test the association of various dimensions of neighborhood diversity with individual-level perceptions of neighborhood cooperation and social cohesion, while controlling for individual and other neighborhood-level variables. Results suggest that low collective efficacy is associated with diversity in cultural characteristics such as ethnicity, birthplace, and household type. We ascribe these findings to patterns of neighborhood transition, or churning, where high rates of neighborhood in-migration and out-migration act to weaken collective efficacy. Diversity, both in educational attainment and in income, however, are associated with high neighborhood collective efficacy, and are not related to neighborhood churning.
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