Muslim–Non-Muslim Locational Attainment in Philadelphia: A New Fault Line in Residential Inequality?

Abstract

This study examines Muslim–non-Muslim disparities in locational attainment. We pool data from the 2004, 2006, and 2008 waves of the Public Health Management Corporation’s Southeastern Pennsylvania Household Survey. These data contain respondents’ religious identities and are geocoded at the census-tract level, allowing us to merge American Community Survey data and examine neighborhood-level outcomes to gauge respondents’ locational attainment. Net of controls, our multivariate analyses reveal that among blacks and nonblacks, Muslims live in neighborhoods that have significantly lower shares of whites and greater representations of blacks. Among blacks, Muslims are significantly less likely than non-Muslims to reside in suburbs. The Muslim disadvantages for blacks and nonblacks in neighborhood poverty and neighborhood median income, however, become insignificant. Our results provide support for the tenets of the spatial assimilation and place stratification models and suggest that Muslim–non-Muslim disparities in locational attainment define a new fault line in residential stratification.

Unpacking Nuances in Mechanisms Linking Religion and Socioeconomic Standing: An Empirical, Mixed‐Effects, and Cross‐National Analysis

“…Research conducted in Mexico, using 2000 Mexican Census Data, showed that people who identified with non-Christian religious denominations and Mormons tended to experience greater socioeconomic status than other religious groups (Heaton et al 2012). Drawing on three waves (2004, 2006, and 2008) of data from the Public Health Management Corporation's Southeastern Pennsylvania Household Survey, Friedman et al (2019) found that people who identified as Muslim experienced lower geographic socioeconomic mobility (measured as neighborhood poverty and median income) compared with the rest of the overall population. Research conducted in the African context, and drawing on the Ghana Living Standards Survey spanning 2005 and 2006, found that among religious women, those who identified as Spiritualists, Pentecostals, and Methodists tended to have substantially higher income than their Presbyterian and Traditionalist counterparts (Beck and Gundersen 2016).…”

Socio‐spatial differentiation and residential inequalities in Chinese cities

“…Socio‐spatial differentiation plays an increasingly crucial role in shaping China's residential inequality, or “disparities in locational attainment” (Friedman et al., 2019). Before China's market reform, urban residents had relatively equal access to housing designated by egalitarian policies; there was no strong pattern of residential inequality (Yeh et al., 1995).…”