Contenu du sommaire : Économie des quartiers prioritaires

Transforming deprived districts This paper examines urban public policies for deprived areas in the light of urban economics theories and their lessons for the socio-economic organization of cities. While improving living conditions is indeed a factor in enhancing the socio-economic standing of urban neighbourhoods, the process operates by attracting wealthier new inhabitants and driving out the existing poorer ones. We emphasize that urban economics struggles to demonstrate the emergence of stable mixed urban patterns. Either such patterns must be considered as transitional stages between two states of equilibrium in terms of segregation or attempts must be made to establish sustainable positive social interaction between privileged and deprived households within neighbourhoods. Lastly, public action to promote urban regeneration, although subject to criteria of equity, enhances neighbourhood property values and may seek out leverage effects from private actors. The final question seems to be that of city-wide transformation : it is pointless reasoning on the scale of deprived neighbourhoods as if they were isolated. Geographical “lock-in” causes friction that detracts from the success of area-specific policies. And conversely, social opening-up is not geographically neutral because policies can only transform the geography of urban segregation. Classification JEL : H31, R2, R31, R38, R58.

The question of so-called sensitive neighborhoods from a “ghetto” perspective In this article, we discuss the concept of “ghetto” and its use in the sociological research in France in order to characterize the evolution of some popular housing areas. We propose a critical perspective of the main currents of sociological literature, including those that refer to a comparative analysis with the American ghetto. In this perspective, we examine the debates and issues by ordering them around three main axes. The first examines the nature of segregation mechanisms and its dimensions : “social,” “urban” and “ethnic,” to evaluate the relevance of applying the term “ghetto.” The second concerns the consequences of segregation on the lifestyles and types of social relationship at work. The third analyzes the place and role of public interventions in the segregation's dynamics. Ultimately, the concept of “ghetto” poses many more problems than it solves. Thus, it focuses on extreme situations and destroys a heterogeneous and dynamic reality, while other scientific works are more attentive to the contrasts and to the possibilities of initiative and of constructing life courses. These works invite to renew the questions about the term “ghetto.” Classification JEL : I38, J15, J71, Z13.

Urban policy : zoning as an identification tool for the social divide The recent reform of the geography of the urban policy, established by the “Loi de programmation pour la ville et la cohésion urbaine,” aims for better identifying the most deprived areas by putting in place a simpler and more objective zoning based on the concentration of low-income households. It actually saves consistency and results in a more homogeneous priority card because the single criterion of income managing captures relatively well the other socioeconomic characteristics of neighborhoods. But, due to the existence of too great territorial differences, this new zoning can't be the only tool to solve the French “social divide.” The new priority geography continues thus to target areas with important economic development gaps. Similarly, the degrees of remoteness of neighborhoods in cities, although made more homogeneous, remain various. Therefore, given the significant differences that persist between areas, the establishment of criteria for prioritization and finer differentiation seems essential in order to improve the effectiveness of public action. Classification JEL : R00, R23, R28, R58.

Youth insertion on the labor market, diploma and original neighborhood : a dynamic modeling We study the impact of the initial localization at the end of studies on the transitions between the states of the labor market. We consider a sufficiently long period to account for the insertion process of young people into working life. The trajectories of youth who all left school in 1998 go through five states of the labour market : permanent employment contracts, temporary employment contracts, subsidized employments, unemployment, non-participation. The model we use allows to disentangle true from spurious state dependence. This allows to compare the insertion of young people with different observed or unobserved characteristics. Our main results show that the subsidized jobs do not significantly improve the insertion into stable employment. The original neighborhood of these young people has a significant negative impact on their insertion on the labor market. More specifically, the original neighborhood has a negative impact on access to unstable jobs. Classification JEL : C33, C34, J60, C53, R23.

Does unemployment in the neighbourhood affect the labour market integration of youth ? Over the last decades, youth unemployment rate has remained high, and wide local variations have been observed in urban areas. This article analyses the impact of the employment rate in the neighbourhood where individuals live on the integration of young entrants to the labour market. To disentangle this social interaction effect from sorting, we propose a neighbourhood-fixed-effect strategy using very local variation of the employment rate. Using a representative sample of the young men leaving the French educational system in 1998 and 2004, we find a positive effect of the local level of employment on the probability to get a job three years after leaving school, suggesting the existence of interactions between new entrants and other workers in the neighbourhood. The extent of the effect depends on the time spent in the neighbourhood by the new entrant to the labour market, her level of education and her immigrant origin. This effect vanishes in areas where the employment rate is low : a marginal change in the local employment rate only increases chances to get a job for youth located in neighbourhoods where the initial rate is higher than 75%. Classification JEL : R23, Z13.

Effects of local neighbourhood, effects of administrative department : hiring discrimination based on place of residence The aim of this study is to measure hiring discrimination based on place of residence against young people in Paris area, distinguishing the effects of department's (Paris and Seine-Saint-Denis), town's and neighborhood's reputation. Field experiment data are used to identify the specific impact on access to employment for each of these three spatial levels as well as their combined effects. The place of residence affects the chances of being invited to a job interview. There is a dramatic effect at the department's level in the case of Seine-Saint-Denis department. To a lesser extent, there is also an effect at the neighborhood's level, according to his reputation. These effects are far-reaching : a good address can triple the chances of being invited to a job interview. Living in a deprived area is less harmful when one lives in a disadvantaged department itself. Classification JEL : C81, C93, J15, J71.

Does living in deprived urban areas impact the daily mobility of workers ? This article addresses the issue of the lack of access in deprived urban zones (« zus » for « sensitive urban zones ») that the French urban policy aims to reduce. This study evaluates the impact of the place of residence of the entire employed active persons of Lyon metropolitan area on their whole daily mobility and on their commuting, by identifying the specific effect of living in a neighborhood with or without a zus. The analysis is based on the Household Travel Survey conducted in the Lyon urban area in 2006, enhanced with contextual indicators extracted from geographical databases. Results of multivariate models show that living in a neighborhood with a zus reduces not only the number of workers' trips but also their daily travel distance and travel time. The own contribution of the effect of living in a neighborhood with a zus is in the order of minus 2 km and 7 min per day. By contrast, when we restrict our analysis to commuting trips, we observe an opposite effect : all other things being equal, the workers living in a neighborhood with a zus travel longer distances than their counterparts living in a neighborhood without zus (1.5 km more, for 10% more travel time). These differences are moderate but statistically significant. They rather confirm the hypotheses of lack of access and of spatial mismatch faced by the active population of deprived urban zones and are an incentive to carry out such analyses in other urban contexts. Classification JEL : R41, J48, R12.

Do geographically targeted tax incentive benefit to zone residents ? This paper provides a survey of the empirical literature on enterprise zones evaluation, in the US and in France. It focuses on the impact of such programs on zone residents. Results of studies differ regarding the ability of enterprise zones programs to promote the development of economic activity and to improve the welfare of zone residents. In the US, the effects vary considerably depending on the program assessed : the incapacity of State Enterprise Zones to stimulate local activity and employment of zone residents contrasts with the efficiency of Federal Empowerment Zones, which have had a positive impact on zones residents in terms of employment, wage and quality of life. The conclusions regarding the effect of the French program are more homogeneous : they suggest a positive impact on business location and employment in targeted zones which occurs however at the expense of neighboring areas. Moreover, the effect of the French program for zones residents is limited. Better understanding the role of the design of these policies in terms of financial amount, eligibility criteria or types of incentives could be an important area of improvement in the implementation of urban enterprise zones programs. Classification JEL : R12, R38, H25.

Evaluating the effect of a spatialized policy for access to housing A French law on solidarity and urban renewal, called the sru law, was voted in December 2000 and imposes medium and large municipalities to have at least 20% of social housing, otherwise they are liable to a fine. We evaluate its effects for municipalities which population is close to the eligibility threshold. The sru law would have had a significant positive effect on the construction of social housing which is increasing over time. For the municipalities in our sample which initially contain social housing, the law would have increased the annual growth rate of the number of social dwellings by 1.25 point on average over the 2000-2008 period. The effect would have concentrated on municipalities which are initially the furthest from the target of the law, with a proportion of social housing lower than 5% in 2000. We also find that the law would have led to a decrease in the within-municipality segregation of dwellings according to their type (social or private), maybe because of a more scattered development of social housing. We are unable to find any effect of the law on housing prices in the resale real estate market. Classification JEL : R31, R38.

Does the Réseaux ambition réussite program improve pupils' academic achievement ? “Réseaux ambition réussite” (rar), or “ambition success networks,” are a compensatory education policy that took place in France between 2006 and 2011. To be eligible, a collège (equivalent to junior high school) had to enroll at least 67% of pupils from a disadvantaged background, and at least 10% of pupils having repeated twice or more when entering junior high school. About 3% of junior high school pupils were enrolled in a rar. Evaluating the impact of such a policy is complicated by two types of bias. First, the selection of schools into the program makes that the pupils enrolled in a rar school would have lower academic achievement than the other pupils on average, even in the absence of the program. Second, the school is not the good level of analysis, since pupils may select themselves into the program. To analyze the causal effect of the program on individual academic achievement at the end of junior high school, we use a regression discontinuity method and an original exhaustive data set. Overall, we do not find any significant effect of enrollment in a rar on individual educational outcomes at the end of junior high school. The absence of average effect may be due to differentiated effects according to pupils' characteristics. Classification JEL : I24, I28, C21.

National urban policies : an oxymoron ? The national value added is shared between productive capital, labor and land. This is one of the oldest and most important questions of political economy. This article uses this grid of analysis to discuss how local public policies benefit one or the other of these three factors, either explicitly or implicitly and silently. We favour a policy mix based on national policies targeted to national aid to individuals (mostly income support, work incentives and mobility) and fungible budgets defined at the local level, after national transfers to the local level. The policy mix at the local level may include schooling policy, transportation policies and urban renewal policies. Instead, direct or indirect transfers to local firms such as geographically-targeted tax reliefs should be banned : they interfere with fair competition and lead to displacement of jobs with little net employment effects. Classification JEL : H7, I38, J48, R5.