Pulling apart: Economic segregation among suburbs and central cities in major metropolitan areas (original) (raw)

Take the Money and Run: Economic Segregation in U.S. Metropolitan Areas

American Sociological Review, 1996

Compared to racial segregation, economic segregation has received little attention in recent empirical literature. Yet a heated debate has arisen concerning Wilson's hypothesis (1987) that increasing economic segregation plays a role in the formation of urban ghettos. This paper presents a methodological critique of the measure of economic segregation used by Massey and Eggers (1990) and finds that it confounds changes in the income distribution with spatial changes. I develop a "pure" measure of economic segregation and present findings on all U.S. metropolitan areas from 1970 to 1990. There have been steady increases in economic segregation for whites, blacks, and Hispanics in both the 1970s and 1980s, but the increases have been particularly large and widespread for blacks and Hispanics in the 1980s. The causes of these changes are explored in a reduced form, fixed-effects model. Social distance theory and structural economic transformations do affect economic segregation, but the large increases in economic segregation among minorities in the 1980s cannot be fully explained within the model. These rapid increases in economic segregation, especially in the context of recent, albeit small, declines in racial segregation, have important implications for urban policy, poverty policy, and the stability of urban communities. Take the Money and Run: Economic Segregation in U.S. Metropolitan Areas Racial segregation in the United States has been declining since 1970, but the decreases have been so slow that segregation of African Americans is still very high (Farley and Frey 1994). At the same time, economic inequality has been increasing since 1979, if not before (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1992, 1993). Both phenomena have been extensively documented. A third dimension of socioeconomic differentiation has received much less attention in recent years: economic segregation, i.e., the spatial segregation of households by income or social class. The relative dearth of recent studies in this area is surprising, in light of the importance ascribed to economic segregation by William Julius Wilson in his classic work, The Truly Disadvantaged (1987). In this paper I document the fact that economic segregation has been increasing, not only among blacks, as Wilson alleges, but also within all major racial and ethnic groups, although the increases were largest for blacks and Hispanics in the 1980s. Moreover, the phenomenon is incredibly widespread, affecting virtually every metropolitan area in the United States. I also develop a causal model which, though clearly incomplete, suggests that the rapid increases in economic segregation among minorities represent a dramatic break from the pattern of previous decades. In other words, the factors which explain the changes in economic segregation for all groups over the 1970 to 1980 period consistently underpredict the changes for minorities in the 1980 to 1990 period. The breakdown of the 1970-1980 model represents a fundamental change in the processes that generate economic segregation. Understanding the causes of these changes, I would argue, has become a prerequisite to effective analysis of urban policies and programs.

of Exclusion : Race , Segregation , and Concentrated Poverty

2011

The late 2000s Great Recession has refocused the nation’s attention on poverty, racial and ethnic inequality, and spatial disparities in income. This paper uses newly-released place and county poverty estimates from the 2005-2009 American Community Survey, along with estimates from the 1990 and 2000 decennial census summary files, to provide post-2000 estimates of concentrated poverty in metro and nonmetro areas. We document a 25 percent increase in the number of poor places during the post-2000 period (and growing shares of poor people living in them) after deep and widespread declines in concentrated poverty during the economic boom of the 1990s. Not only are America’s poor likely to be living in poor areas, but the post-2000 period ushered in a new pattern of spatial (and social) isolation of America’s poor. Patterns of class and racial segregation were distinct but overlapping phenomena. Poor minorities—both in metro and nonmetro areas—are highly ghettoized spatially at the macr...

Poverty, Prosperity, and Place: The Shape of Class Segregation in the Age of Extremes

Rising economic disparities in the United States at the end of the twentieth century make understanding the severity and determinants of residential segregation between the affluent and poor increasingly important. Existing studies are limited, however, by little attention to the spatial configuration of class segregation. Segregation occurs along multiple spatial dimensions-the affluent and poor may be split not only between different neighborhoods, but concentrated over more or less land, more or less centralized, and clustered near or far from other similar neighborhoods. Each dimension affects the amount of contact and shared resources between groups differently, and overlaps between them produce particularly severe social isolation. Theories conflict over the spatial form of class segregation, with the concentric zone model expecting the affluent to be clustered in large-lot developments on the metropolitan fringe and critics proposing alternative spatial forms in a more patchwork pattern. I use U.S. Census summary data for all metropolitan areas in 2000 to test competing theories of the patterns and determinants of the spatial form of affluent-poor segregation using cluster and regression analysis. I identify two dominant spatial forms of affluent-poor segregation in U.S. metropolitan areas in 2000, and find that racial diversity and segregation are key determinants of which spatial form characterizes a metropolitan area. The links between poverty, prosperity, and place were therefore crucially shaped by race as well as economic disparities in the age of extremes.

The Geography of Exclusion: Race, Segregation, and Concentrated Poverty

The late 2000s Great Recession brought rising neighborhood poverty in the midst of affluence, and the reemergence of a racial and ethnic “underclass” living in inner-city neighborhoods. Our approach redirects attention to a level of geography–cities, suburbs, and small rural towns–where local political and economic decisions effectively exclude the poor and minority populations. It uses newly released poverty data from the 2005–2009 American Community Survey to provide evidence of changing macro patterns of spatially concentrated poverty. We show that roughly one in four U.S. places had poverty rates exceeding 20 percent in 2005 through 2009, up 31 percent since 2000. Roughly 30 percent of America's poor reside in poor places, and concentrated poverty is especially high among poor African Americans. Overall increases in place-based poverty nonetheless were muted over the decade by declines in concentrated poverty among poor Hispanics (a pattern that reflects spatial diffusion to new destinations). We also show that America's poor were sorted unevenly from place-to-place within local labor markets (i.e., counties); poor-nonpoor segregation rates between places increased from 12.6 to 18.4 between 1990 and the 2005–2009 period. Segregation was especially high among disadvantaged blacks and Hispanics. Our empirical results make a case for more scholarly attention on newly emerging patterns of concentrated poverty at the place level.

The Spatial Bias of Federal Housing Law and Policy: Concentrated Poverty in Urban America

University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 1995

Jacksonville.' In both extreme poverty and distressed tracts, the overwhelming majority of residents in 1990 were racial minorities. 8 Nevertheless, from 1980 to 1990, the proportion composed of Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites increased slightly. 9 Concentrated inner-city poverty generates problems that are different both in kind and in magnitude from those experienced by poor people in other geographic settings. WilliamJulius Wilson, in his 1987 book The Truly Disadvantaged," 0 argues that the geographic isolation of poor people generates behavioral adaptations called "concentration effects." 1 1 Specifically, children growing up in neighborhoods with few employed role models develop weak attachments to the labor force. 2 Lacking employment opportunities and the appropriate socialization to seek work, youths frequently engage in deviant or illegal activities to earn income and gain status, thereby further distancing themselves from middle-class norms. 3 These behaviors are reinforced by peer groups. Activities that are likely to assist them in obtaining employment and social mobility, such as graduating from high school, are stigmatized rather than valued. 14 7 See id. at 299. s In 1990, "blacks made up 57.3 percent of the population in extreme poverty tracts, Hispanics made up 23.8 percent, and non-Hispanic Whites 15.5 percent." Id. at 264. 9 See id. at 264-65 ("[N]on-Hispanic whites marginally increased their proportions between 1980 and 1990 in both extreme poverty and distressed tracts .... The proportions of blacks declined, largely because of substantial increases in the absolute number of Hispanics in extreme poverty and distressed tracts."). '0 WILLIAM J. WILSON, THE TRULY DISADVANTAGED: THE INNER CITY, THE UNDERCLASS, AND PUBLIC POLICY (1987). "Id. at 58 (stating that the term "concentration effects" "capture[s] the differences in the experiences of low-income families who live in inner-city areas from ... those who live in other areas in the central city today"). 12 See id. at 56-57 (explaining that when poor youths live in economically diverse communities, a "social buffer" exists because by observing education, steady employment, and family stability, they grow to understand that there are social norms).

The Fractured Metropolis" Revisited: Local Government as Segregationist Force?

Weiher (1991) marked perhaps the most scathing indictment of fragmented local government in the United States as an instigator of residential segregation on the basis of race and ethnicity. The author goes so far as to label municipal boundary creation and change "anti-government." Many works have sought to quantify the relationship between fragmentation and segregation, largely as such a correlation would be an expected result of the sorting mechanism first posited by ; indeed, the link is so tight that "Tiebout choice" is a synonym for local government density. This literature includes a number of older and more rudimentary works (e.g. Pack and Pack 1977), but has become both more prolific and more sophisticated of late (e.g. Rhode and Strumpf 2003). That said, the literature still has very few works that are both longitudinal in their design and sample a great number of metropolitan areas. Fewer still consider alternative measures of fragmentation beyond governments per capita, such as the Metropolitan Power Diffusion Index (Miller 2002) and central city elasticity (Rusk 2003).