Adolescents growing up in high-poverty neighborhoods are at risk for a range of negative outcomes. Girls face specific threats because of their gender—omnipresent harassment, pressure for early sexual initiation, pervasive intimate partner violence, and high risk of sexual assault.This article uses mixed-methods data from the Three-City Study of Moving to Opportunity (MTO) to explore how moving to lower-poverty neighborhoods may have influenced adolescent girls’ life chances. MTO families moved to neighborhoods with lower levels of violent crime overall, but MTO girls also experienced a substantial reduction in the “female fear,” Gordon and Riger’s term for the fear of sexual harassment, coercion, and rape. The authors argue that this change is a plausible explanation for the notable improvements in MTO girls’ well-being.
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