The Spatial Segregation of Ethnic and Demographic Groups: Comparative Evidence from Stockholm and San Francisco

What drives racial segregation? New evidence using Census microdata

“…In previous studies that have attempted to examine this question, researchers have typically known only the marginal distributions of race, education, income, and other household attributes (see Massey and Denton (1993), (1998), and Harsman and Quigley (1995). In the current analysis, we seek to exploit the richness of the restricted Census data, in particular the fact that these data provide the joint distribution of household characteristics at very low levels of geographic aggregation.…”

“…In order to use data characterizing the racial composition of smaller geographic areas, such as Census tracts or zip codes, researchers have generally made use of data that are not explicitly linked to individual households. Miller and Quigley (1990) and Harsman and Quigley (1995), for example, compare the degree of racial segregation in a metropolitan area to the degree of stratification on the basis of income and other household characteristics, concluding that 4 sorting on the basis of these other characteristics can explain only a small amount of observed racial segregation. …”

Income Diversity within Neighborhoods and Very Low-Income Families

“…The modestly scaled empirical literature that considers the mix of economic groups within neighborhoods includes Hardman andIoannides (2004a, 2004b); Immergluck and Smith (2002); Ioannides (2004); Ioannides and Seslen (2002); Jargowsky (1996bJargowsky ( , 1997; Krupka (2006); Thomas, Schweitzer, and Darnton (2004); Talen (2006); and Turner and Fenderson (2006). These studies focus on many of the same questions as our study does.…”

“…What metropolitanwide forces seem to affect neighborhood-level diversity? The common finding is that a significant amount of income diversity typically is present in U.S. neighborhoods (Hardman andIoannides, 2004a, 2004b;Ioannides, 2004;Ioannides and Seslen, 2002;Krupka, 2006;Talen, 2006;Turner and Fenderson, 2006), even those neighborhoods with poverty rates of more than 40 percent (Jargowsky, 1996b). Much less is known about trends in income-diverse neighborhoods, however, and the extent to which VLI families constitute a substantial part of the mix.…”

“…Conversely, middle-and high-income households are most likely to predominate in tracts with the smallest share of the lowest income group. Hardman andIoannides (2004a, 2004b) assess income mixing at the microneighborhood level by using clusters of 11 adjacent homes delineated by the American Housing Survey (AHS). In both studies, the authors measure income as a proportion of the adjusted median family income, as defined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).…”