Dimensions of Residential Segregation

Published by rachels | Filed under Segregation

Before I put up the full post on the Supreme Court decision on voluntary desegregation programs, I want to briefly discussion the dimensions of of residential segregation. Segregation is a really hot topic in sociology these days. This is probably true for a few reasons, including the fact that it is fairly easy to measure with statistics and it’s one of those areas where we still have significant progress to make.

For the most part, sociologists are interested in residential segregation, which simple means refers to the racial/ethnic mix of blocks, neighborhoods, cities, and metropolitan areas. We tend to be less concerned with segregation as a legal concept, and it seems that a minority of sociologists studying segregation focus on school segregation or segregation in other social institutions such as churches and families.. I suspect that we don’t focus as much of school segregation because it is so highly correlated with residential segregation. I think too often people start by looking at school segregation, but they ignore the fact that more integrated neighborhoods would lead to more integrate schools. I suspect that people don’t focus on residential segregation because it is much harder to challenge, and it’s much more firmly entrenched (at least it is in recent history).

So what are the dimensions of residential segregation. The Census Bureau website identifies 5 major dimensions of segregation: eveness, exposure, concentration, centralization, and clustering. ((Iceland, John, Daniel Weinberg and Erika Steinmetz. 2000. US Census Bureau, Series CENSUR-3, Racial and Ethnic Residential Segregation in the United States: 1980-2000. US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.)) Each one of these measures a slightly different element of segregation, and some cities may do well on some measures and poorly on others. One major weakness is that the census doesn’t give segregation data for whites in it’s general report on housing segregation, so the data is lacking in that area.

Eveness

Evenness refers to the distribution of a particular population group.

The most widely used measure of evenness and the most-widely used measure of residential segregation, in general, is dissimilarity. Conceptually, dissimilarity, which ranges from 0 (complete integration) to 1 (complete segregation), measures the percentage of a group’s population that would have to change residence for each neighborhood to have the same percent of that group as the metropolitan area overall.

For example, if a group has a dissimilarity score of .75, then 75% of the people in that group would have to move for the group to be evenly distributed throughout the given area. The table below highlights the eveness for major racial and ethnic minority groups in the US, keep in mind the closer the number is to one the more segregated the group is.

Exposure

Exposure measures potential contact with other groups, and it is measured with the isolation index, which measures how much contact people have with members of their own group. It is also between 0-1, and higher number mean high segregation.

Concentration

Concentration measures “the relative amount of physical space occupied” by a group. Generally, concentration figures are based on a group’s relative density in a particular area, usually a city or a metro areas. If a group is more segregated it is more dense. In the tables below, I have recorded the Census figures for the delta index, which measures concentration and has figures between 0-1, with those closer to one indicating more segregation. This index measures the proportion/percent of people who would have to move to have a group be distributed across a given area without having greater density in any place. This may sound similar to eveness, but it is different because it is measuring spacing, not percents.

Centralization

Centralization measures how closely a group is to the center of an urban area. This is measure is useful because many cities currently have a pattern, which some call the “chocolate city vanilla suburbs” phenomenon. In these metro areas, the cities are predominantly people of color and the suburbs are predominantly white. Of course, some day the US could also have the reverse pattern as they do in places like Paris, where ethnic and racial minority groups are concentrated in suburban ghettos.

Absolute centralization examines only the distribution of the minority group around the metropolitan area center and varies between -1 and 1. Positive values indicate a tendency for group members to reside close to the center, while negative values indicate a tendency to live in outlying areas as compared with the reference group. A score of 0 means that a group has a uniform distribution throughout the metropolitan area.

As you read the table below keep mind the numbers closer to zero mean less segregation, and those closer to 1 or -1 mean more segregation.

Clustering

The final dimension is clustering, which “measures the degree to which minority group members live disproportionately in
contiguous areas.” For this, the Census Bureau uses the spacial proximity measure, which

basically measures the extent to which neighborhoods inhabited by minority members adjoin one another, or cluster, in space. Spatial proximity equals 1 if there is no differential clustering between minority and majority group members. It is greater than 1 when members of each group live nearer to one another than to members of the other group, and it is less than 1 in the rare case that minority people lived nearer, on average to nonminority people than to members of their own group.

A Few Trends Of Note From the Graphs

Looking carefully over the graphs, we can see a few trends of note. First, across measures of segregation there have been some declines in segregation for Blacks and American Indians from the 1980 to 2000. The declines are modest, but nevertheless, they are declines. For Asians and Latinos, the trends are more mixed. In a few areas there has been lower segregation, and in other areas there are no changes or increased segregation depending on which measure is used. Some of the increases of lack of changes for Latinos and Asians is likely attributable to the large increases in their populations. ((Their rates of intermarriage have also decreased from 1990-2000.)) Overall, African Americans are by far the most segregated racial minority group. ((I would really like to see data for whites here because I would suspect comparable figures.)) American Indians and Alaska Natives are the least segregated racial minority group and Latinos, and Asians fall somewhere in between.

I think this is very important background information that needs to be addressed before we can adequately discuss school segregation, so keep these figures in mind as we go on to discuss school segregation.

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