Abstract
The present study examines inner and outer suburban ring attainment outcomes among racial and ethnic groups that reside in the nation’s metropolitan areas. The main objective is to evaluate the extent to which the relationship between racial and ethnic group’s socioeconomic status characteristics and residence between inner and outer suburban rings conforms to the tenets of the spatial assimilation model. Using micro-level data from the five-year 2012–2016 American Community Survey, the author calculates binomial logistic regression models to determine the effects of socioeconomic status (SES) and other relevant predictors on residence within the nation’s metropolitan area’s suburban inner and outer rings. The results both confirm and contradict the main tenets of the spatial assimilation model. To the extent that income, education, and homeownership are positively related to residence in both suburban rings, the findings also suggest that access to inner and outer rings is hierarchically stratified by race and ethnicity.
Highlights
A common theme that is echoed in racial and ethnic locational attainment studies is that residence in the suburbs is a function of socioeconomic status (SES) attainments (Alba et al 1999; Alba and Nee 2003; Farrell 2016; Logan and Alba 1993; Logan et al 1996)
All racial and ethnic groups are more likely to reside in the outer suburban rings than their inner ring counterparts
To the extent that the spatial assimilation theory predicts that suburban residence is linked to higher levels of individual-level socioeconomic attainments, we expect a similar pattern with respect to residence in the outer suburban rings
Summary
A common theme that is echoed in racial and ethnic locational attainment studies is that residence in the suburbs is a function of socioeconomic status (SES) attainments (Alba et al 1999; Alba and Nee 2003; Farrell 2016; Logan and Alba 1993; Logan et al 1996). To the extent that outer suburban rings have higher income levels and they are in a better position to offer qualitatively more desirable resources and opportunities to its residents (Anacker 2015b), the spatial assimilation model suggests that residence in such neighborhoods is a function of each racial and ethnic group’s SES, and acculturation, characteristics. While not focusing on the residential attainment differences between inner and outer suburban rings, Timberlake et al (2011), find that the impact of housing growth on blacks’ suburbanization was the weakest relative to the effect on whites, Asians, and Hispanics It appears that, for blacks and other darker skin groups, the penalty of race supersedes other factors that are highly valued in U.S society, such as education and income (Charles 2003). It is expected that racial and ethnic differences in the odds of residing in the outer-suburban rings (versus inner-rings) will continue to remain, even in the presence of controls for SES, acculturation characteristics, family/household status, and the region of where each group resides
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