Neighborhood context and enduring differences in the density of charitable organizations: reinforcing dynamics of foundation and dissolution

Within neighborhood studies, the organizational dimension has been relatively neglected despite theory predicting a relative lack of organizations in more deprived neighborhoods. This article provides a longitudinal empirical perspective, using a novel data set that follows through time over 125,000 charitable organizations across the full distribution of neighborhood contexts in England from the mid-1990s onward. It shows that there are enduring, sizable, and extensive differences in the density of charitable organizations according to neighborhood deprivation and that these differences persist over time even as neighborhoods experience organizational turnover. It shows that these differences in density are maintained through reinforcing processes: first, compared to less deprived neighborhoods, in more deprived neighborhoods fewer charities are founded per person; second, even after foundation, charities in more deprived areas experience a higher hazard of dissolution.