Metropolitan Residential Segregation Research Articles

Explaining Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Travel for Food Shopping: The Roles of Income, Household Structure, and Metropolitan Residential Segregation in the United States

Explaining Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Travel for Food Shopping: The Roles of Income, Household Structure, and Metropolitan Residential Segregation in the United States

What Would It Take to Desegregate U.S. Metropolitan Areas? Pathways to Residential Desegregation by Race.

Patterns of household mobility across neighborhoods reproduce patterns of racial segregation at the metropolitan level. Substantial literature across the social sciences has explored the scale and predictors of household mobility as well as changes in metropolitan residential segregation over time. This study unifies these two strands of inquiry by connecting the sorting of households across neighborhoods to aggregate changes in segregation levels. Using discrete choice models of intrametropolitan mobility and restricted decennial census and American Community Survey data for 1960-2014, I model the correlates of household mobility and identify the counterfactual scenarios under which lower segregation levels can be achieved. The results show that even though the mobility flows of the White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian populations across census tracts have become more similar over time, U.S. metropolitan areas are far from experiencing large drops in segregation.

White and Latino Locational Attainments: Assessing the Role of Race and Resources in U.S. Metropolitan Residential Segregation

This study examines White-Latino residential segregation in six U.S. metropolitan areas using new methods to draw a connection between two dominant research traditions in the segregation literature and empirically analyze prevailing conceptual frameworks. Based on microlevel locational attainment analyses, we find that for Latinos, acculturation and socioeconomic status are positively associated with greater residential contact with Whites and thus promote lower segregation consistent with predictions of spatial assimilation theory. However, standardization and decomposition analysis reveals that a substantial portion of White-Latino segregation can be attributed to White-Latino differences in the ability to translate acculturation and socioeconomic assimilation into co-residence with Whites. Thus, consistent with predictions of place stratification theory, evidence suggests that spatial assimilation dynamics are limited by continuing race-based factors leading to the expectation that segregation will persist at moderate to high levels even after Latinos reach parity with Whites on social and economic resources that shape locational attainments. Therefore, we offer two conclusions. First, contemporary White-Latino segregation is due in part to group differences in social and economic resources that determine locational attainments and that this component of White-Latino segregation will continue to be significant so long as Whites and Latinos differ along these social and economic characteristics. Second, while spatial assimilation dynamics can promote partial reductions in White-Latino segregation, we expect segregation to continue at moderate to high levels because place stratification dynamics limit Latino residential integration even when Latinos and Whites are comparable on relevant resources.

Metropolitan residential segregation and very preterm birth among African American and Mexican-origin women

Residential segregation is associated with poor health—including poor birth outcomes—among African Americans in US cities and metropolitan areas. However, the few existing studies of this relationship among Mexican-origin women have produced mixed results. In this study, the relationship between segregation and very preterm birth was examined with National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) data on singleton births to African American women (n = 400,718) in 238 metropolitan areas and to Mexican-origin women (n = 552,382) in 170 metropolitan areas. The study evaluated 1) whether residential segregation is positively associated with very preterm birth among both African American and Mexican-origin women and 2) if so, whether exposure to neighborhood poverty accounts for these associations. Results from multi-level analysis indicate that residential segregation is positively associated with very preterm birth among both groups of women. However, this association is robust across different measures of segregation only for African Americans. Conversely, differences across metropolitan areas in average levels of exposure to neighborhood poverty account for the positive association between segregation and very preterm birth among Mexican-origin women, but not among African American women.

The Impact of Metropolitan Residential Segregation on the Employment Chances of Blacks and Whites in the United States

Studies of residential segregation's role in creating employment inequality between blacks and whites have focused on the characteristics of neighborhoods (e.g., mean SES or distance from job centers). in contrast, this study considers the broader structure of metropolitan segregation in which neighborhoods are situated and its impact on the racial disparity in access to employment opportunities. the study employs multilevel analyses and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to test the effects of metropolitan segregation in 1980 on respondents’ probability of being employed by 1990 net of individual and family level characteristics, and to assess the role of segregation in explaining the race gap in employment between blacks and whites. the analyses reveal that residential segregation decreases employment odds for blacks, but not for whites, and explains the residual race gap in the probability of being employed. in addition, the depressive effect of segregation on employment is weaker for black women than it is for black men.

Impact of neighborhood racial composition and metropolitan residential segregation on disparities in breast cancer stage at diagnosis and survival between black and white women in California.

We examined the impact of metropolitan racial residential segregation on stage at diagnosis and all-cause and breast cancer-specific survival between and within black and white women diagnosed with breast cancer in California between 1996 and 2004. We merged data from the California Cancer Registry with Census indices of five dimensions of racial residential segregation, quantifying segregation among Blacks relative to Whites; block group ("neighborhood") measures of the percentage of Blacks and a composite measure of socioeconomic status. We also examined simultaneous segregation on at least two measures ("hypersegregation"). Using logistic regression we examined effects of these measures on stage at diagnosis and Cox proportional hazards regression for survival. For all-cause and breast-cancer specific mortality, living in neighborhoods with more Blacks was associated with lower mortality among black women, but higher mortality among Whites. However, neighborhood racial composition and metropolitan segregation did not explain differences in stage or survival between Black and White women. Future research should identify mechanisms by which these measures impact breast cancer diagnosis and outcomes among Black women.

Beyond Black and White: Metropolitan residential segregation in multi-ethnic America

Whether greater racial and ethnic diversity in the United States is being accompanied by greater integration remains unclear. This analysis examines segregation in the multi-ethnic context over the 1980–2000 period by using the multi-race information theory index (H), which simultaneously takes the presence of many groups into account, and by also looking at the segregation of each group separately. Results indicate that segregation has been decreasing, mainly due to declines in African American segregation and White segregation with little change or slight increases in Asian and Hispanic segregation. Growing diversity was associated with increases in overall segregation, White segregation, Hispanic segregation, and Asian segregation, though strongly associated with declines in Black segregation. For Hispanics and Asians, it was the growth in Hispanic and Asian and Pacific Islander populations, respectively, that were associated with increases in segregation, suggesting that this population growth likely buttressed ethnic enclaves.

Residential Segregation and Minority Home Ownership

This paper analyzes the impact of residential segregation on the home ownership of Black, White, and Hispanic preretirement adults. By combining individual and household level data from the Health and Retirement Study with metropolitan level characteristics from the 1990 census, I am able to identify the unique effect of metropolitan residential segregation on minority home ownership. And, by considering the disparate impact of five dimensions of segregation on home ownership I illustrate the mechanisms through which this effect operates. Results clearly demonstrate the negative effect of segregation on minority home ownership, with key differences between Blacks and Hispanics and across dimensions of segregation that highlight the contextual nature of housing stratification and the importance of urban population dynamics to racial and ethnic housing inequality.

The Effect of School Desegregation on Housing Prices

SINCE 1954 nearly all vestiges of legal segregation of public schools in the South have been eliminated. But, at the same time, the suburbanization of households in Southern cities has contributed to the de facto resegregation of some schools. Just as the Tiebout hypothesis (1956) suggests that households locate according to their preferences regarding local public goods, there is some evidence to indicate that preferences for segregated schools may have contributed to this resegregation. Glantz and Delaney (1973) found that, by one measure, metropolitan residential segregation increased more during the 1960's in Southern metropolitan areas -where city schools were substantially desegregated than in the Northern metropolitan areas studied. And for some organizations, a primary reason for supporting recently ordered metropolitan desegregation plans which would effectively combine city and suburban school systems is the belief that desegregation of city schools alone merely contributed to white flight from the city.' But, because there are other factors which may also cause suburbanization of whites, such as employment decentralization and the growth of Negro ghettos, it is not clear whether school desegregation has had an independent effect on the demand for housing by households. This paper presents an analysis of housing prices to determine whether desegregation has an independent effect on the price paid by whites for housing. Since the supply of housing is relatively inelastic in the short run, an effect of this kind would support the hypothesis that desegregation affects households' demand for housing. While shifts in demand will result primarily in price effects in the short run, quantity changes and locational rearrangement will be most important in the long run. In order to determine if shifts in demand have accompanied desegregation, this paper will examine such price effects. The metropolitan area studied is Atlanta, Georgia, a Southern city which experienced school desegregation and apparent white flight during the 1960's. In 1960, a year before desegregation was begun, 37.2 % of the students in the city school system were Negro. By 1970 this figure was 67.1%. During the decade the proportion of Negro families in the city rose from 34.0% to 47.7%o. These changes reflect a number of different locational trends, one of the most important of which was a rapid growth in the city's Negro population. In order to assess the independent effect of school desegregation on housing demand, it is above all necessary to separate the effect of school racial composition from that of neighborhood racial composition, as well as other supply and demand factors affecting housing prices. The analysis presented in this paper uses data on housing prices and characteristics drawn from 1960 and 1970 census tract reports for Atlanta. The comparatively rapid end to de jure segregation in that city during the decade of the 1960's provides a unique opportunity to separate the effects of neighborhood and school integration. The empirical analysis supports the hypothesis that school desegregation does have a significant effect on housing prices, independent of neighborhood racial change. Section I discusses the use of housing prices in determining the effect of public service characteristics on housing demand. Sections II and III describe the data and the empirical findings. Section IV summarizes the analysis. Received for publication December 3, 1973. Revision acaccepted for publication July 30, 1974. * I am grateful to Professors Martin Feldstein, John Kain, Richard Freeman, and Gregory Ingram, members of the public finance and urban economics seminars at Harvard, and referees for this Review for comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Financial support was provided by the Ford Foundation. 1 See, for example, the testimony of William L. Taylor, Director of the Center for National Policy Review in hearings before the Senate Select Committee on Equal Educational Opportunity, November 30, 1971, p. 10475 or Junie Brown, City School Case: No End in Sight, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, December 31, 1972, pp. IA, 6A.