Here’s a hypothetical question. If white and black families had roughly the same amount of income, would they live in roughly the same sorts of neighborhoods? Or would they still be residentially segregated?
The answer, sadly, is that – despite having the same amount of income to spend on housing, which is one of the key socio-economic benchmarks of success in America – they would most likely still be segregated, with white families living in more affluent residential neighborhoods than black families, according to an interesting new study on residential segregation by three Stanford researchers.
Researchers have tracked two well-known trends for decades: racial segregation in residential neighborhoods has been slowly declining in America (though it is still relatively high); while residential segregation by income, which was very low in 1970, has now risen sharply.
What this new study shows, however, is how these two types of persistent segregations interact. How different are the neighborhoods of different race or ethnic groups with the same incomes? And if racial segregation is declining, are black and Hispanic families living in higher or lower income neighborhoods than in the past.
© Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305.
