Regional Differences in Affluent Black and Affluent White Residential Outcomes

Abstract

This study compares the residential outcomes of affluent black and affluent white households using data from the 1990 and 2000 censuses and pooled data from the 2005–2009 American Community Survey. Results indicate that affluent black households are highly segregated from their white economic peers. Furthermore, affluent black households live in neighborhoods of lower average quality compared to affluent white households. Affluent black households are least segregated from affluent white households in the South, but the greatest equality in neighborhood‐quality outcomes occurs in the West. The South, however, shows the greatest improvement in both average neighborhood quality for affluent black households and a substantial reduction in affluent black–affluent white segregation over the entire study period. The authors find that place stratification theory better describes the residential geography of affluent black households than does spatial assimilation theory.

Understanding the Neighborhood Concentration of Affluent Black Households in the 1990s

“…Despite this positive trend, however, high levels of segregation still existed between blacks and whites [2][3][4]. Research focusing on higher status blacks found that they also experience high levels of residential segregation from whites, though somewhat less than lower-income blacks [5][6][7][8][9][10]. Complementary literature draws attention to how issues of race, class, and place negatively affect life chances [11][12][13].…”

“…Other researchers maintain that race continues to be a significant barrier for African Americans and their residential placement, regardless of their class position or racial preferences [8,10,[19][20][21]. While more recent studies on race and place have investigated middle-class blacks and the places in which they live [22][23][24][25][26], to date, there has been little serious exploration of affluent black households and their spatial outcomes [9].…”