Work

How Population Structure Shapes Neighborhood Segregation

Year: 2014

Type: article

Abstract: This study provides a framework for understanding how population composition conditions the relationship between individuals' choices about group affiliation and aggregate patterns of social separation or integration. The substantive focus is the role of income inequality in racial residential segregation. The author identifies three population parameters--between-group inequality, within-group inequality, and relative group size--that determine how income inequality between race groups affects racial segregation. She uses data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to estimate models of individual-level residential mobility and incorporates these estimates into agent-based models. She then simulates segregation dynamics under alternative assumptions about (1) the relative size of minority groups and (2) the degree of correlation between race and income among individuals. The author finds that income inequality can have offsetting effects at the high and low ends of the income distribution. She demonstrates the empirical relevance of the simulation results using fixed-effects, metro-level regressions applied to 1980-2000 U.S. census data.

Source: American Journal of Sociology

DOI: 10.1086/675411

Author: Elizabeth E. Bruch

Institution: University of Michigan

Language: English

Topic: Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies

Subfield: Sociology and Political Science

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Reduced inequalities

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development