"College for All" for Urban, Minority Youths: Whether
and How Educational and Occupational Expectations Intersect
for the Youth of Gautreaux Two.
Social researchers have long recognized the importance of aspirations and expectations in youths’
future outcomes. In particular, researchers have focused primarily on the educational expectations of youths
(e.g. Alexander and Cook 1979; Hanson 1994; Kao and Tienda 1998), and, to a lesser extent on their
occupational ambitions (Marini and Greenberger 1978), and family goals (Anderson 1999; Edin and Kefalas
2005). Considered separately, these three types of expectations – educational, occupational, and family –
have been shown to influence young adult outcomes like educational attainment, occupational profiles, and
family formation. However, Schneider and Stevenson (1999) in their recent book, The Ambitious
Generation, suggest that how well expectations are matched also plays an important part in youths’ adult
outcomes. Schneider and Stevenson (1999) find that it is the congruence between educational and
occupational expectations that enables some students to be more successful in post-secondary education and
early careers than others. Those who are able to align expectations earlier are better able to avoid obstacles
and disappointments in achieving them, according to Schneider and Stevenson (1999).
In this research, we describe when and how the educational, occupational, and family aspirations and
expectations of a subgroup of youth often marginalized in traditional status attainment research are aligned.
The youths we describe are from families who participated in the Gautreaux Two program in Chicago,
Illinois, implemented in 2002. Through this program, qualified families in existing public housing were
given special vouchers to move to “opportunity areas,” defined as those areas with poverty rates below
23.49% and the proportion of African Americans under 31%. The youths who participated in the Gautreaux
Two study range between 9 and 19 years of age and are household members of the adult respondents in the
sample. Families in the Gautreaux study are chosen from public housing dwellers in Chicago; therefore the
youths are poor, from urban housing developments, and predominantly black.
While poor, urban, and minority youths are represented in statistics drawn from nationally
representative databases, a special focus on this group is warranted. Because traditional avenues for mobility
that lead to colleges and universities are less accessible, urban youths may explore other pathways to success
and social mobility. Inner-city youth may consider several ideologies of success simultaneously, making the
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Convention