Introduction

Abstract

The purpose of this book is to describe and analyze patterns and trends in racial and ethnic residential segregation across the United States over time and across communities. With new methods to expand our scope of analysis beyond what has been done before, we cover recent decades in a variety of settings including metropolitan and micropolitan areas and rural communities (i.e., noncore counties). We direct our primary focus to residential segregation between major panethnic racial groups – Non-Hispanic White, Black, Latino, and Asian households in 2010 – and to broad changes in segregation from 1990 through 2010. But we also give attention to several more detailed aspects of trends and patterns in residential segregation. While the literature in sociology, demography, urban planning, and geography is rich with studies of residential segregation patterns, we believe this book establishes an important baseline for placing recent segregation research in a new context and for informing segregation research going forward. The basis for this is that we apply new methods for measuring and analyzing segregation that can at times drastically alter results obtained using more traditional approaches. In particular, we argue that these new methods of measurement and analysis address and overcome important methodological problems that have limited past research and, as a result, allow us to expand the scope of segregation studies and the quality of measurement to obtain improved findings that more accurately capture and reflect the demographic reality we are seeking to document.