Racial Income Disparities and the Measurement of Segregation

Rajiv Sethi () and Rohini Somanathan

Urban/Regional from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Racial segregation in residential patterns remains pervasive in the United States. This persistence is usually attributed to some combination of neighborhood preferences over racial composition, discrimination in real estate and credit markets, and the effects of racial disparities in income. We propose a method for the decomposition of segregation measures into two components. One of these can be interpreted as the component of segregation that can be attributed to the effect of racial income disparities alone, while the other captures the combined effect of neighborhood preferences and discrimination. Applying the method to thirty major metropolitan areas, we find that the role played by racial income disparities in accounting for segregation is generally modest but varies significantly across cities.

Keywords: Residential Segregation; Racial Income Disparities; Index of Dissimilarity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C81 D31 R14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2001-07-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-ltv
Note: Type of Document - Tex; prepared on IBM PC; to print on HP/PostScript; pages: 18 ; figures: included
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwpur:0107001

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