Evaluating the association between Home Owners’ Loan Corporation redlining and concentrated Black poverty

Abstract

ABSTRACT Scholars have paid considerable attention to the neighborhood assessments made by the New Deal era Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC); much has been said of how poor assessments relate to long-term disadvantage for Black neighborhoods. But we know little specifically about associations between HOLC gradings and contemporary concentrated Black poverty when controlling for historic racial/ethnic composition and changing neighborhood characteristics. This study uses a sample of 4,851 census tracts from 90 cities across the United States from the Mapping Decline project to see how HOLC assessments relate to concentrated Black poverty. We also leverage historical Census data collected by IPUMS and the Longitudinal Tract Database. Findings indicate that even in places without Black populations or economic disadvantage at the time of assessment poor HOLC gradings are related to concentrated Black poverty in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.