Residential Segregation
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Robert Mare -
Daniel Lichter
Leader: Daniel Lichter, Robert Mare
The Residential Segregation RG is dedicated to updating the country’s system for measuring residential segregation. This research group has 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, including (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, research group 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 is to develop a new infrastructure for monitoring 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
| Title | Author | Media | |
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| State of the Union 2019: Occupational Segregation | Kim A. Weeden |
State of the Union 2019: Occupational SegregationAuthor: Kim A. WeedenPublisher: Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality Date: 06/2019
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| Emerging Patterns of Hispanic Residential Segregation: Lessons from Rural and Small-Town America | Daniel T. Lichter, Domenico Parisi, Michael C. Taquino |
Emerging Patterns of Hispanic Residential Segregation: Lessons from Rural and Small-Town AmericaAuthor: Daniel T. Lichter, Domenico Parisi, Michael C. TaquinoPublisher: Rural Sociology Date: 05/2016 The past two decades have ushered in a period of widespread spatial diffusion of Hispanics well beyond traditional metropolitan gateways. This article examines emerging patterns of racial and ethnic residential segregation in new Hispanic destinations over the 1990–2010 period, linking county, place, and block data from the 1990, 2000, and 2010 decennial censuses. Our multiscalar analyses of segregation are framed by classical models of immigrant assimilation and alternative models of place stratification. We ask whether Hispanics are integrating spatially with the native population and whether recent demographic and economic processes have eroded or perpetuated racial boundaries in nonmetropolitan areas. We show that Hispanic residential segregation from whites is often exceptionally high and declining slowly in rural counties and communities. New Hispanic destinations, on average, have higher Hispanic segregation levels than established gateway communities. The results also highlight microscale segregation patterns within rural places and in the open countryside (i.e., outside places), a result that is consistent with emerging patterns of “white flight.” Observed estimates of Hispanic-white segregation across fast-growing nonmetropolitan counties often hide substantial heterogeneity in residential segregation. Divergent patterns of rural segregation reflect local-area differences in population dynamics, economic inequality, and the county employment base (using Economic Research Service functional specialization codes). Illustrative maps of Hispanic boom counties highlight spatially uneven patterns of racial diversity. They also provide an empirical basis for our multivariate analyses, which show that divergent patterns of local-area segregation often reflect spatial variation in employment across different industrial sectors. |
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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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segregation - CPI Affiliates
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Daniel Lichter |
Segregation Research Group Leader; Professor of Sociology; Director of Cornell Population Center; Ferris Family Professor of Policy Analysis and Management; Robert S. Harrison Director of the Institute for Social Sciences |
Cornell University |
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Robert Denis Mare |
Segregation Research Group Leader, Research Professor and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology |
University of California, Los Angeles |
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Ann Owens |
Assistant Professor of Sociology and Spatial Sciences |
University of Southern California |
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Domenico Parisi |
Executive Director, National Strategic Planning & Analysis Research Center; Executive Director of the State Longitudinal Data System State Data Clearinghouse; Professor of Sociology |
Mississippi State University |
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Joscha Legewie |
Assistant Professor of Sociology |
Yale University |
Pages
Segregation - Other Research
| Title | Author | Media | |
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| The Segregation of Opportunity: Social and Financial Resources in the Educational Contexts of Lower- and Higher-Income Children, 1990–2014 | Ann Owens, Kendra Bischoff |
The Segregation of Opportunity: Social and Financial Resources in the Educational Contexts of Lower- and Higher-Income Children, 1990–2014Author: Ann Owens, Kendra BischoffPublisher: Demography Date: 09/2019 This article provides a rich longitudinal portrait of the financial and social resources available in the school districts of high- and low-income students in the United States from 1990 to 2014. Combining multiple publicly available data sources for most school districts in the United States, we document levels and gaps in school district financial resources—total per-pupil expenditures—and social resources—local rates of adult educational attainment, family structure, and adult unemployment—available to the average public school student at a variety of income levels over time. In addition to using eligibility for the National School Lunch Program as a blunt measure of student income, we estimate resource inequalities between income deciles to analyze resource gaps between affluent and poor children. We then examine the relationship between income segregation and resource gaps between the school districts of high- and low-income children. In previous work, the social context of schooling has been a theoretical but unmeasured mechanism through which income segregation may operate to create unequal opportunities for children. Our results show large and, in some cases, growing social resource gaps in the districts of high- and low-income students nationally and provide evidence that these gaps are exacerbated by income segregation. Conversely, per-pupil funding became more compensatory between high- and low-income students’ school districts over this period, especially in highly segregated states. However, there are early signs of reversal in this trend. The results provide evidence that school finance reforms have been somewhat effective in reducing the consequences of income segregation on funding inequities, while inequalities in the social context of schooling continue to grow. |
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| Building Inequality: Housing Segregation and Income Segregation | Ann Owens |
Building Inequality: Housing Segregation and Income SegregationAuthor: Ann OwensPublisher: Sociological Science Date: 08/2019 This article foregrounds housing in the study of residential segregation. The spatial configuration of housing determines the housing opportunities in each neighborhood, the backdrop against which households’ resources, preferences, and constraints play out. I use census and American Community Survey data to provide the first evidence of the extent of housing segregation by type and by cost at multiple geographic scales in large metropolitan areas in the United States from 1990 to 2014. Segregation between single- and multifamily homes and renter- and owner-occupied homes increased in most metropolitan areas, whereas segregation by cost declined. Housing segregation varies among metropolitan areas, across geographic scales, and over time, with consequences for income segregation. Income segregation is markedly higher when and where housing segregation is greater. As long as housing opportunities remain segregated, residential segregation will change little, with urgent implications for urban and housing policy makers. |
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| The Uptick in Income Segregation: Real Trend or Random Sampling Variation? | John R. Logan, Andrew Foster, Jun Ke, Fan Li |
The Uptick in Income Segregation: Real Trend or Random Sampling Variation?Author: John R. Logan, Andrew Foster, Jun Ke, Fan LiPublisher: American Journal of Sociology Date: 07/2018 Recent trends in income segregation in metropolitan regions show that, after a decline in the 1990s, there was an increase in 2000–2010 that reinforced concerns about the overall growth in U.S. income inequality since the 1970s. Yet the evidence may be systematically biased to exacerbate the upward trend because the effective sample for the American Community Survey (ACS) is much smaller than it was for the 2000 census to which it is being compared. Apparent changes in disparities across census tracts may result partly from a higher level of sampling variation and bias due to the smaller sample. This study uses 100% microdata from the 1940 census to simulate the impact of different sampling rates and applies those approaches to publicly available data for 2000 and 2007–11. The reduction in sample sizes associated with the ACS appears to exaggerate the evidence for increasing income segregation for all measures tested here. |
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| Is It Who You Are or Where You Live? Residential Segregation and Racial Gaps in Childhood Asthma | Diane Alexander, Janet Currie |
Is It Who You Are or Where You Live? Residential Segregation and Racial Gaps in Childhood AsthmaAuthor: Diane Alexander, Janet CurriePublisher: NBER Date: 07/2017 Higher asthma rates are one of the more obvious ways that health inequalities between African American and other children are manifested beginning in early childhood. In 2010, black asthma rates were double non-black rates. Some but not all of this difference can be explained by factors such as a higher incidence of low birth weight (LBW) among blacks; however, even conditional on LBW, blacks have a higher incidence of asthma than others. Using a unique data set based on the health records of all children born in New Jersey between 2006 and 2010, we show that when we split the data by whether or not children live in a “black” zip code, this racial difference in the incidence of asthma among LBW children entirely disappears. All LBW children in these zip codes, regardless of race, have a higher incidence of asthma. Our results point to the importance of residential segregation and neighborhoods in explaining persistent racial health disparities.
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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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