U.S. Highway 71 and Social Determinants of Health: Long-Term Disparities in Earnings, Economic Mobility, Incarceration, and Teen Birth in Kansas City.

A growing body of research has revisited the social costs of U.S. interstate highways. In Kansas City, U.S. Highway 71 (Bruce R. Watkins Drive) was built through the city's East Side over nearly two decades, displacing residents, destroying community institutions, and raising safety and health concerns. Using Opportunity Atlas data, we compare long-term outcomes-income, economic mobility, incarceration, and teen birth-for the 1978-1983 cohorts by childhood residence: census tracts along the Highway 71 corridor versus other tracts in Kansas City. At age 35, those who grew up along the Highway 71 corridor had approximately 45% lower household incomes and 29% lower individual incomes than those from other parts of the city. They were more than twice as likely to be incarcerated and had substantially higher teenage birth rates. Disparities persisted in subgroup analyses of children from low-income families and remained statistically significant after adjusting for pre-existing neighborhood characteristics.