Moving to Opportunity tackles one of America's most enduring dilemmas: the great, unresolved question of how to overcome persistent ghetto poverty. Launched in 1994, the MTO program took a largely untested approach: helping families move from high-poverty, inner-city public housing to low-poverty neighborhoods, some in the suburbs. The book's innovative methodology emphasizes the voices and choices of the program's participants but also rigorously analyzes the changing structures of regional opportunity and constraint that shaped the fortunes of those who "signed up." It shines a light on the hopes, surprises, achievements, and limitations of a major social experiment. As the authors make clear, for all its ambition, MTO is a uniquely American experiment, and this book brings home its powerful lessons for policymakers and advocates, scholars, students, journalists, and all who share a deep concern for opportunity and inequality in our country.

Preface1. Places and Lives2. Ghetto Poverty Before and After Katrina3. Great Expectations and Muddling Through: Designing and Launching the Experiment4. The Unequal Geography of Opportunity5. Moving to Security6. When Your Neighborhood is Not Your Community7. Struggling to Stay out of High Poverty Neighborhoods: Finding Good Housing8. Finding Good Schools9. Finding Work10. LessonsAppendix: Studying Moving to OpportunityWorks Cited