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Racial Differences in Neighborhood Attainment: The Contributions of Interneighborhood Migration and In Situ Change

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Demography

Abstract

Recent research shows that as they age, blacks experience less improvement than whites in the socioeconomic status of their residential neighborhoods. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and U.S. decennial censuses, we assess the relative contribution of residential mobility and in situ neighborhood change (i.e., change surrounding nonmobile neighborhood residents) to the black-white difference in changes in neighborhood socioeconomic status and racial composition. Results from decomposition analyses show that the racial difference in in situ neighborhood change explains virtually all the black-white difference in neighborhood socioeconomic status change. In contrast, racial differences in residential mobility explain the bulk of the black-white difference in neighborhood racial compositional change. Among blacks and whites initially residing in low-income and predominantly minority neighborhoods, whites experience a much greater increase than blacks in the socioeconomic status of their neighborhoods and the percentage of their neighbors who are non-Hispanic white. These differences are driven primarily by racial differences in the economic and racial composition of local (intracounty) movers’ destination neighborhoods and secondarily by black-white differences in the likelihood of moving long distances.

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Notes

  1. In supplemental analysis, we used alternative indicators of neighborhood SES, including median family income and the poverty rate. The results from analyses using these alternative indicators were very similar to those generated using neighborhood average family income.

  2. We do not include other covariates in the models because we are interested in the overall contributions of interneighborhood migration and in situ change, rather than in their contributions net of the correlates of these processes.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (SES-1258677 and SES-1258758) and from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R24 HD044943 and R24 HD042828). The collection of data used in this study was partly supported by the National Institutes of Health (R01 HD069609) and the National Science Foundation (1157698). We thank Kyle Crowder for assistance with file construction and for helpful comments. We also thank several anonymous reviewers and the editors for helpful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Center for Social and Demographic Analysis, University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, NY, 12222, USA

    Ying Huang & Scott J. South

  2. Department of Sociology, Georgia State University, 1063 Langdale Hall, Box 5020, Atlanta, GA, 30302, USA

    Amy Spring

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  1. Ying Huang
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Correspondence to Ying Huang.

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Huang, Y., South, S.J. & Spring, A. Racial Differences in Neighborhood Attainment: The Contributions of Interneighborhood Migration and In Situ Change. Demography 54, 1819–1843 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-017-0606-y

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