Neighborhood Income Composition by Race and Income, 1990-2009

Year of Publication: 
2015
Publication: 
The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
Volume/Issue: 
660(1)
Pages: 
78-97

Residential segregation, by definition, leads to racial and socioeconomic disparities in neighborhood conditions. These disparities may in turn produce inequality in social and economic opportunities and outcomes. Because racial and socioeconomic segregation are not independent of one another, however, any analysis of their causes, patterns, and effects must rest on an understanding of the joint distribution of race/ethnicity and income among neighborhoods. In this paper, we use a new technique to describe the average racial composition and income distributions in the neighborhoods of households of different income levels and race/ethnicity. Using data from the decennial censuses and the American Community Survey, we investigate how patterns of neighborhood context in the United States over the past two decades vary by household race/ethnicity, income, and metropolitan area. We find large and persistent racial differences in neighborhood context, even among households of the same annual income.

published version of paper

metropolitan racial neighborhood disparities data august 2015

march 2015 draft version of paper

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APA Citation

Reardon, S.F., Fox, L., & Townsend, J. (2015). Neighborhood Income Composition by Race and Income, 1990-2009. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 660(1), 78-97.

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