The Reign of Racialized Residential Sorting: Gentrification and Residential Mobility in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

Despite recent theoretical advances in explaining the persistence of segregation in the United States through structural sorting processes, how the spread and intensification of gentrification intersects with these processes is less clear. Drawing on the 2000–2017 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and fixed effects logistic and linear regression models, we examine gentrification’s relationship with residential mobility patterns and whether this relationship is racially stratified. We do not find evidence that living in gentrifying neighborhoods is associated with higher rates of moving for lower-income respondents compared to those living in nongentrifying neighborhoods nor does this differ by race. However, we find starkly different locational outcomes between Black and White movers across the income spectrum, rather than the gentrification status of one’s neighborhood. We argue that processes of racial stratification in the housing market largely govern residential outcomes, regardless of gentrification.