Counterfactual Dissimilarity: Can Changes in Demographics and Income Explain Increased Racial Integration in U.S. Cities?

Paul Carrillo and Jonathan Rothbaum

Working Papers from The George Washington University, Institute for International Economic Policy

Abstract: Urban areas in the U.S. have experienced important changes in racial/ethnic distributions over the last two decades. In the average urban area today black-white racial integration has increased by 10.6 percent between 1990 and 2010. Changes in racial and ethnic distributions and gentrification are often associated with changes in residents' demographic characteristics, such as income, education and age. This paper applies a non-parametric spatial decomposition technique using complete (restricted-use) microdata files from the 1990 Decennial Long Form Census and 2008-2012 American Community Surveys to assess what portion of the changes in racial distributions can be attributed to changes in individual characteristics. We find that that, on average, a little over a third of the observed increase in integration can be accounted for by changes in observed individual characteristics.

Keywords: Counterfactual Distribution; Decomposition; Spatial Econometrics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C14 R23 R30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2021-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo and nep-ure
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https://www2.gwu.edu/~iiep/assets/docs/papers/2021WP/CarrilloIIEP2021-10.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Counterfactual dissimilarity: Can changes in demographics and income explain increased racial integration in US cities? (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gwi:wpaper:2021-10

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