This paper assesses the relative importance of deprivation and social integration factors in accounting for neighborhood differences in subjective powerlessness. A survey of two predominantly black neighborhoods at varying levels of black population change finds that residents of the transitional neighborhood exhibit significantly lower levels of power lessness than those living in the ghetto. The evidence reported favors deprivation argu ments over neighborhood integration ones. The implications of this study for understand ing the spatial distribution of other social problems such as delinquency are explored.
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