Sun Belt Rising: Regional Population Change and the Decline in Black Residential Segregation, 1970–2009

Abstract

The goal of this study is to examine the extent to which population shifts over the post–Great Migration period and divergent trends in segregation across regions contributed to the overall decline in black segregation in the United States in recent decades. Using data from the 1970 to 2000 decennial censuses and the 2005–2009 American Community Survey (ACS), our analysis indicates that black dissimilarity and isolation declined by more in the South and West than in the Northeast and Midwest. Nevertheless, regional population shifts account for only a modest amount (8% to 12%) of the decline in black-white segregation over the period and an even smaller proportion of the decline in black-nonblack segregation, in part because the largest declines in segregation occurred in the West while the region with the largest relative increase in the black population was the South. Using more refined census divisions rather than census regions provided some additional explanatory power (shifts across divisions explained 15%–16% of the decline in black-white segregation): divisions with larger gains in their share of the black population tended to have larger declines in black segregation. Overall, although the effect of the regional redistribution of the black population on declines in segregation was significant, of even greater importance were other causes of substantial declines in segregation in a wide array of metropolitan areas across the country, and especially in the West, over the past 40 years.

The Historical Demography of Racial Segregation

“…This narrow chronological focus misses the historical origins of segregation, which may have important implications for its current levels and forms. Our study suggests that looking at the early forms of segregation and how they varied by region may be useful in explaining widening regional differences in segregation in the contemporary United States (Iceland et al 2013). Future research should address this gap by documenting the SIS in different historical contexts, on its own or in combination with other measures of racial segregation.…”

Segregation, Income Disparities, and Survival in Hemodialysis Patients

“…21,22,24 White segregation, in this study, is likely to be located in higher income areas. The effects of segregation for blacks, while declining over time, 33 might selectively include greater levels of stress; unsafe physical environments; maladaptive diets; lack of access to inexpensive, nutritional foods; and residence in areas that are characterized by violence or predisposing to inactivity or that magnify perceptions of discrimination. [7][8][9]34 This finding is important because it applies to more than one third of patients with ESRD, a group 3.5 times more likely than whites to start hemodialysis.…”

Decomposing American immobility: Compositional and rate components of interstate, intrastate, and intracounty migration and mobility decline

“…These racial and ethnic differences in longer-distance migration decline are consistent with findings outside of the narrow migration decline literature (e.g., Sharkey 2013Sharkey , 2015 and hold important implications for studies of racial and ethnic inequality in the United States (Carll et al 2016;Foster 2017). Rate effect results also reveal sizeable regional variations in rates of decline that appear to reflect population shifts from the Rustbelt to the Sunbelt (Frey 2002;Iceland, Sharp, and Timberlake 2013). Trends in the probability of any move originating in each census division are shown in Figure 5.…”