The Ecology of Inequality: Minorities and the Concentration of Poverty, 1970-1980

Abstract

This article examines trends in the geographic concentration of poverty among whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians in 60 U.S. mentropolitan areas from 1970 to 1980. It describes changes in the distributional structure of income, the extent of income inequality, and the degree of spatial segretation by income. These factors are then related to levels and trends in poverty concentration. Concentrated urban poverty is confined principally to blacks outside the West and to Hispanics in the Northeast. Poverty concentration among these groups does not reflect a tendency for upper-status minority members to live apart from the poor but an interaction between changes in the distributional structure ov income and patterns of racial/ethnic segregation. The occurence of rising poverty under conditions of high racial/ethnic segregation explains the growing spatial isolation of poor blacks and hispanic in U.S. urban society.