Residential Segregation
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Robert Mare
Leader: Robert Mare
The residential segregation RG is dedicated to updating the country’s system for measuring residential segregation. This RG has settled on three main research commitments: (a) monitoring segregation at the extremes; (b) charting the spatial distribution of the elderly poor; and (c) developing a new GPS-based infrastructure for measuring segregation.
Segregation at the extremes: The first line of research addresses the need to better monitor segregation at the extremes, in particular (a) the possible rise of enclave-style segregation at the very top (the “one percent”) and (b) the yet more troubling possibility of a resurgence of extreme segregation among the very poor. In a related recession brief, Robert Sampson has shown that poor neighborhoods have become yet poorer in the downturn, raising the possibility that hyper-segregation is indeed emerging.
Segregation of the elderly poor: In the second line of research, RG members are charting the spatial distribution of the elderly poor, given emerging concerns about their ghettoization. This line of research, which is being carried out in collaboration with the Stanford Center on Longevity, begins with a simple descriptive mapping of elderly poor that reveals the extent to which they are indeed isolated and segregated.
Real-time measures of segregation: The third main initiative within this RG is to develop a new infrastructure for monitoring “total interactive” segregation. The conventional approach of carrying out separate and static measurements of residential, school, work, friendship, and marriage segregation can be replaced with a direct behavioral framework that tracks the continuous-time patterning of inter-person contact. By exploiting GPS measurements (increasingly available, even for the poor, via mobile phones), it becomes possible to track poor, middle-class, and rich people as they move through their day and attend school, go to work, carry out their shopping, and visit friends and family. This methodology will produce a real-time measure of how much segregation there is and, in particular, the extent to which the poor are growing increasingly isolated in school, home, work, and leisure.
Featured Examples
Segregation - CPI Research
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| The Continuing Increase in Income Segregation, 2007-2012 | Sean Reardon, Kendra Bischoff |
The Continuing Increase in Income Segregation, 2007-2012Author: Sean Reardon, Kendra BischoffPublisher: Date: 03/2016 In this report, we use the most recent data from the American Community Survey to investigate whether income segregation increased from 2007 to 2012. These data indicate that income segregation rose modestly from 2007 to 2012. This continues the trend of rising income segregation that began in the 1980s. We show that the growth in income segregation varies among metropolitan areas, and that segregation increased rapidly in places that experienced large increases in income inequality. This suggests that rising income inequality continues to be a key factor leading to increasing residential segregation by income. |
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| Childhood Environment and Gender Gaps in Adulthood | Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Frina Lin, Jeremy Majerovitz, Benjamin Scuderi |
Childhood Environment and Gender Gaps in AdulthoodAuthor: Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Frina Lin, Jeremy Majerovitz, Benjamin ScuderiPublisher: NBER Date: 02/2016 We show that differences in childhood environments play an important role in shaping gender gaps in adulthood by documenting three facts using population tax records for children born in the 1980s. First, gender gaps in employment rates, earnings, and college attendance vary substantially across the parental income distribution. Notably, the traditional gender gap in employment rates is reversed for children growing up in poor families: boys in families in the bottom quintile of the income distributionare less likely to work than girls. Second, these gender gaps vary substantially across counties and commuting zones in which children grow up. The degree of variation in outcomes across places is largest for boys growing up in poor, single-parent families. Third, the spatial variation in gender gaps is highly correlated with proxies for neighborhood disadvantage. Low-income boys who grow up in high-poverty, high-minority areas work significantly less than girls. These areas also have higher rates of crime, suggesting that boys growing up in concentrated poverty substitute from formal employment to crime. Together, these findings demonstrate that gender gaps in adulthood have roots in childhood, perhaps because childhood disadvantage is especially harmful for boys. |
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| State of the Union 2016: Residential Segregation | Daniel T. Lichter, Domenico Parisi, Helga de Valk |
State of the Union 2016: Residential SegregationAuthor: Daniel T. Lichter, Domenico Parisi, Helga de ValkPublisher: Date: 02/2016 Segregation often overlaps with many other place-based inequalities—poverty, unemployment, crime, and housing quality and overcrowding. These overlapping disadvantages are seemingly much more common in the U.S. than in European countries, where government efforts to promote integration provide a clear contrast to the market-driven solutions preferred in the U.S. |
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| State of the States: Spatial Segregation | Daniel T. Lichter, Domenico Parisi, and Michael C... |
State of the States: Spatial SegregationAuthor: Daniel T. Lichter, Domenico Parisi, and Michael C...Publisher: Date: 01/2016 |
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| Neighborhood Income Composition by Race and Income, 1990-2009 | Sean F. Reardon, Joseph Townsend, Lindsay Fox |
Neighborhood Income Composition by Race and Income, 1990-2009Author: Sean F. Reardon, Joseph Townsend, Lindsay FoxPublisher: Date: 07/2015 Residential segregation, by definition, leads to racial and socioeconomic disparities in neighborhood conditions. These disparities may in turn produce inequality in social and economic opportunities and outcomes. Because racial and socioeconomic segregation are not independent of one another, however, any analysis of their causes, patterns, and effects must rest on an understanding of the joint distribution of race/ethnicity and income among neighborhoods. In this paper, we use a new technique to describe the average racial composition and income distributions in the neighborhoods of households of different income levels and race/ethnicity. Using data from the decennial censuses and the American Community Survey, we investigate how patterns of neighborhood context in the United States over the past two decades vary by household race/ethnicity, income, and metropolitan area. We find large and persistent racial differences in neighborhood context, even among households of the same annual income. |
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Segregation - CPI Working Papers
| Title | Author | Media | |
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| Race, Income, and Enrollment Patterns in Highly-Selective Colleges, 1982-2004 | Sean F. Reardon, Rachel Baker, Daniel Klasik |
Race, Income, and Enrollment Patterns in Highly-Selective Colleges, 1982-2004Author: Sean F. Reardon, Rachel Baker, Daniel KlasikPublisher: Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality Date: 08/2012 Where a student attends college has become increasingly important in the last few decades. As education has grown significantly more important in the labor market, competition among students for access to the most selective colleges and universities has grown as well. In this brief we examine patterns of enrollment, by race and family income, in the most selective colleges and universities. We also simulate racial and socioeconomic patterns of admission to selective colleges under several types of "race-blind" admissions policies, including policies like the Top Ten Percent admissions policy currently in use in Texas and a similar policy in California. For the analyses in this study, we rely on data from three national longitudinal studies of students in the high school classes of 1982, 1992, and 2004. |
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| Methodological Issues in the Analysis of Residential Preferences, Residential Mobility, and Neighborhood Change | Elizabeth E. Bruch, Robert D. Mare |
Methodological Issues in the Analysis of Residential Preferences, Residential Mobility, and Neighborhood ChangeAuthor: Elizabeth E. Bruch, Robert D. MarePublisher: Date: 08/2012 This paper reviews methods for analyzing both individual preferences and choices about where to live, and the implications of these choices for residential patterns. Although these methods are discussed in the context of residential choice, they can be applied more broadly to individual choices in a range of social contexts where behavior is interdependent.We also discuss specific problems with residential mobility data, including the treatment of one’s current location as a potential choice, the aggregation of units and the need to take into account variations in neighborhood size, the problem of very large choice sets; and the link between residential mobility and patterns of neighborhood change. |
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| The New Latino Underclass: Immigration Enforcement as a Race-Making Institution | Douglas S. Massey |
The New Latino Underclass: Immigration Enforcement as a Race-Making InstitutionAuthor: Douglas S. MasseyPublisher: Date: 04/2012 Latinos have now surpassed African Americans as the nation’s largest minority group. Although Latinos have been in the country in significant numbers since the 1848 annexation of Northern Mexico, the Latino population has grown rapidly in recent decades as a result of immigration from Mexico and Central America, constituting 16.3% of the population in 2010. As their ranks have grown, Latinos in general and Mexicans in particular have been subjected to a variety of processes of racialization in public rhetoric and the media, and these have been associated with radical shifts in immigration and border policy, such that the U.S. immigration control system has become a major race-making institution for Latinos. This paper documents the progressive demonization of Latinos in the media, the rise of a harsh immigration enforcement regime, and the accompanying decline in the socioeconomic welfare of Latinos. In the end, the immigration enforcement system has come to affect Latinos in the same way that the criminal justice system affects blacks, further exacerbating intergroup inequalities and contributing to the growth of a new underclass in the United States. |
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| Changes in Racial and Gender Inequality Since 1970 | C. Matthew Snipp, Sin Yi Cheung |
Changes in Racial and Gender Inequality Since 1970Author: C. Matthew Snipp, Sin Yi CheungPublisher: Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality Date: 05/2011 The decades between 1970 and 2010 bracket a critically important period in the history of race and gender relations in the United States. Landmark court decisions and innovative legislation were starting to dismantle the most oppressive features of the American racial hierarchy in the years just prior to 1970. At the same time, women entered the paid labor force in record numbers. Gender discrimination became a recognized problem and outlawed by federal legislation. The social upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s precipitated an equally powerful backlash against these changes that culminated with the election of Ronald Reagan and a socially and fiscally conservative congress. The so-called "Reagan revolution" was marked by a serious effort to turn back earlier reforms and especially diminish the role of government in protecting minority rights. Forty years later, an African-American man and a White woman were leading contenders as the presidential candidate of the Democratic party, followed by an unsuccessful bid by a White man and a White woman to become the president and vice-president of the United States. The 2008 presidential campaign underscored the question of which was a greater disadvantage, race or gender and while the contest seemed to be settled in favor of gender other disturbing developments such as the mass incarceration of African-American men in the 1980s and 1990s re-opened debates about civil rights in America. |
Segregation - Other Research
| Title | Author | Media | |
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| An Opportunity Agenda for Renters | David Sanchez, Tracey Ross, Julia Gordon |
An Opportunity Agenda for RentersAuthor: David Sanchez, Tracey Ross, Julia GordonPublisher: Center for American Progress Date: 12/2015 This report provides an overview of the latest research that demonstrates how people’s address effects their life outcomes. The report also outlines several policies to promote economic opportunity for America’s low-income renters. |
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| Spatial Assimilation in U.S. Cities and Communities? Emerging Patterns of Hispanic Segregation from Blacks and Whites | D. T. Lichter, D. Parisi, M. C. Taquino |
Spatial Assimilation in U.S. Cities and Communities? Emerging Patterns of Hispanic Segregation from Blacks and WhitesAuthor: D. T. Lichter, D. Parisi, M. C. TaquinoPublisher: Sage Publications Date: 07/2015 This article provides a geographically inclusive empirical framework for studying changing U.S. patterns of Hispanic segregation. Whether Hispanics have joined the American mainstream depends in part on whether they translate upward mobility into residence patterns that mirror the rest of the nation. Based on block and place data from the 1990–2010 decennial censuses, our results provide evidence of increasing spatial assimilation among Hispanics, both nationally and in new immigrant destinations. Segregation from whites declined across the urban size-of-place hierarchy and in new destinations. Hispanics are also less segregated from whites than from blacks, but declines in Hispanic-black segregation have exceeded declines in Hispanic-white segregation. This result is consistent with the notion of U.S. Hispanics as a racialized population—one in which members sometimes lack the freedom to join whites in better communities. Hispanic income was significantly associated with less segregation from whites, but income inequality alone does not explain overall Hispanic segregation, which remains high. The segmented assimilation of Hispanics that we observe supports two seemingly contradictory theories: both the idea that spatial assimilation can come from economic and cultural assimilation and the notion that economic mobility is no guarantee of residential integration.
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| The Buffering Hypothesis: Growing Diversity and Declining Black-White Segregation in America's Cities, Suburbs, and Small Towns? | Daniel T. Lichter , S. R. Sanders, K. M. Johnson, D. Parisi |
The Buffering Hypothesis: Growing Diversity and Declining Black-White Segregation in America's Cities, Suburbs, and Small Towns?Author: Daniel T. Lichter , S. R. Sanders, K. M. Johnson, D. ParisiPublisher: Date: 03/2015 The conventional wisdom is that racial diversity promotes positive race relations and reduces racial residential segregation between blacks and whites. We use data from the 1990–2010 decennial censuses and 2007–2011 ACS to test this so-called “buffering hypothesis.” We identify cities, suburbs, and small towns that are virtually all white, all black, all Asian, all Hispanic, and everything in between. The results show that the most racially diverse places—those with all four racial groups (white, black, Hispanic, and Asian) present—had the lowest black-white levels of segregation in 2010. Black-white segregation also declined most rapidly in the most racially diverse places and in places that experienced the largest recent increases in diversity. Support for the buffering hypothesis, however, is counterbalanced by continuing high segregation across cities and communities and by rapid white depopulation in the most rapidly diversifying communities. We argue for a new, spatially inclusive perspective on racial residential segregation. |
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| Vulnerable Populations and Transformative Law Teaching | Society of American Law Teachers, Golden Gate... |
Vulnerable Populations and Transformative Law TeachingAuthor: Society of American Law Teachers, Golden Gate...Publisher: Carolina Academic Press Date: 03/2011 The essays included in this volume began as presentations at the March 19–20, 2010 “Vulnerable Populations and Economic Realities” teaching conference organized and hosted by Golden Gate University School of Law and co-sponsored by the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT). That conference, generously funded by a grant from The Elfenworks Foundation, brought together law faculty, practitioners, and students to reexamine how issues of race, gender, sexual identity, nationality, disability, and generally—outsider status—are linked to poverty. Contributors have transformed their presentations into essays, offering a variety of roadmaps for incorporating these issues into the law school curriculum, both inside the classroom as well as in clinical and externship settings, study abroad, and social activism. These essays provide glimpses into “teaching moments,” both intentional and organic, to help trigger opportunities for students and faculty to question their own perceptions and experiences about who creates and interprets law, and who has access to power and the force of law. This book expands the parameters of law teaching so that this next generation of attorneys will be dedicated to their roles as public citizens, broadening the availability of justice. Contributors include: John Payton; Richard Delgado; Steven W. Bender; Sarah Valentine; Deborah Post and Deborah Zalesne; Gilbert Paul Carrasco; Michael L. Perlin and Deborah Dorfman; Robin R. Runge; Cynthia D. Bond; Florence Wagman Roisman; Doug Simpson; Anne Marie Harkins and Robin Clark; Douglas Colbert; Raquel Aldana and Leticia Saucedo, Marci Seville; Deirdre Bowen, Daniel Bonilla Maldonado, Kathleen Neal Cleaver, Colin Crawford, and James Forman, Jr.; Susan Rutberg; Mary B. Culbert and Sara Campos; MaryBeth Musumeci, Elizabeth Weeks Leonard, and Brutrinia D. Arellano; Libby Adler; and Paulette J. Williams. The editorial board includes Raquel Aldana, Steven Bender, Olympia Duhart, Michele Benedetto Neitz, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Hari Osofsky, and Hazel Weiser. |
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| Place of Work and Place of Residence: Informal Hiring Networks and Labor Market Outcomes | Bayer, Patrick, Stephen L. Ross, Giorgio Topa |
Place of Work and Place of Residence: Informal Hiring Networks and Labor Market OutcomesAuthor: Bayer, Patrick, Stephen L. Ross, Giorgio TopaPublisher: Journal of Political Economy Date: 01/2005 |
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