Race and Socioeconomic Segregation

Abstract

An investigation of the residential contiguity of socioeconomic status groups in the white and black population of the Chicago SMSA in 1970 shows that although segregation indices between socioeconomic groups were comparable for whites and blacks, residential propinquity between high status and low status persons differed dramatically between racial groups. Black professionals and managers lived in tracts with an occupational composition comparable, on the average, to that of tracts where unskilled white workers lived. The neighbors of white high school drop-outs had educational backgrounds similar to those of black college graduates. Black families with incomes over $25,000 lived in poorer tracts than white families with incomes below $3,000. In comparisons of whites and blacks on any variable affected by neighborhood composition, therefore, control for individual characteristics does not eliminate the effects of differential neighborhood characteristics. In the introduction to Kantrowitz's book