SpringerLink
Log in

The Contributions of Places to Metropolitan Ethnoracial Diversity and Segregation: Decomposing Change Across Space and Time

  • Published:
Demography

Abstract

Although the trend toward greater ethnoracial diversity in the United States has been documented at a variety of geographic scales, most research tracks diversity one scale at a time. Our study bridges scales, asking how the diversity and segregation patterns of metropolitan areas are influenced by shifts in the racial/ethnic composition of their constituent places. Drawing on 1980–2010 decennial census data, we use a new visual tool to compare the distributions of place diversity for 50 U.S. metro areas over three decades. We also undertake a decomposition analysis of segregation within these areas to evaluate hypotheses about the roles of different types of places in ethnoracial change. The decomposition indicates that although principal cities continue to shape the overall diversity of metro areas, their relative impact has declined since 1980. Inner suburbs have experienced substantial increases in diversity during the same period. Places with large white majorities now contribute more to overall metropolitan diversity than in the past. In contrast, majority black and majority Hispanic places contribute less to metropolitan diversity than in the past. The complexity of the patterns we observe is underscored through an inspection of two featured metropolises: Chicago and Dallas.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
EUR 32.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or Ebook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Practical considerations guided our selection of the threshold for including metropolitan areas in our sample. It was important that the sample include a broad range of metropolitan areas but only those with enough places in 1980 so that they could be grouped into as many as six categories with multiple observations in each category.

  2. Throughout the text, we identify metropolitan areas by the name of their largest city (based on 2010 population).

  3. The population counts refer to persons living in places and exclude persons living outside of places but in these metropolitan areas.

  4. The U.S. Census assigns four metropolitan areas to multiple regions. For the purposes of creating a nested hierarchy, we have assigned all places in Philadelphia to the Northeast region, all places in Louisville (Kentucky) to the South region, and all places in Youngstown and Cincinnati (Ohio) to the Midwest region.

  5. The upper thresholds for the 20th, 40th, 60th, and 80th percentiles of household income in 1979 dollars are $7,000, $13,000, $20,000, and $29,000, respectively.

  6. We tested our decompositions for robustness to a change in the threshold for identifying White Dominant places. Setting the threshold at 85 % and 95 % instead of 90 % did not alter the substantive conclusions of this analysis.

  7. It would also be reasonable to produce the diversity profiles weighted by population, but the graph then becomes a story about the largest places rather than about the distribution of places, as intended here.

  8. See Parisi et al. (2011) for an examination of the contribution of within-place segregation.

  9. In Tables 2–5, we examine only within-metro change; the bottom line from Table 1 is the top line of Tables 2–5.

  10. With a few notable exceptions (Detroit; Miami; Gary, Indiana; Camden, New Jersey), principal cities saw a mean increase in diversity (E) of .26 between 1980 and 2010. This indicates that the change in Table 2 is overwhelmingly due to shifts in population location and distribution in other kinds of places rather than a resegregation of these diverse places.

  11. Results of the replication are available from the corresponding author upon request.

References

  • Alba, R. D., & Logan, J. R. (1991). Variations on two themes: Racial and ethnic patterns in the attainment of suburban residence. Demography, 28, 431–453.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Allen, J. P., & Turner, E. J. (1989). The most ethnically diverse places in the United States. Urban Geography, 10, 523–539.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bader, M. D. M., & Krysan, M. (2015). Understanding residential moves: Community attraction and avoidance in Chicago: What’s race got to do with it? Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 660, 261–281.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bader, M. D. M., & Warkentien, S. (2016). The fragmented evolution of racial integration since the Civil Rights Movement. Sociological Science, 3, 135–166.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bayer, P., McMillan, R., & Rueben, K. S. (2004). What drives racial segregation? New evidence using census microdata. Journal of Urban Economics, 56, 514–535.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Borjas, G. (1999). Heavens’ gate: Immigration policy and the American economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brown, L. A., & Chung, S.-Y. (2006). Spatial segregation, segregation indices, and the geographical perspective. Population, Space and Place, 12, 125–143.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brown, L. A., & Sharma, M. (2010). Metropolitan context and racial/ethnic intermixing in residential space: U.S. metropolitan statistical areas, 1990–2000. Urban Geography, 31, 1–28.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bruch, E. E. (2014). How population structure shapes neighborhood segregation. American Journal of Sociology, 119, 1221–1278.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carr, P. J., Lichter, D. T., & Kafalas, M. J. (2012). Can immigration save small-town America? Boomtowns and the uneasy path to renewal. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 641, 38–57.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Charles, C. Z. (2006). Won’t you be my neighbor? Race, class, and residence in Los Angeles. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clark, W. A. V. (2002). Ethnic preferences and ethnic perceptions in multi-ethnic settings. Urban Geography, 23, 237–256.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clark, W. A. V., Anderson, E., Osth, J., & Malmberg, B. (2015). A multiscalar analysis of neighborhood composition in Los Angeles, 2000–2010: A location-based approach to segregation and diversity. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 105, 1260–1284.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crowder, K. D., Hall, M., & Tolnay, S. E. (2011). Neighborhood immigration and native out-migration. American Sociological Review, 76, 25–47.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crowder, K. D., Pais, J., & South, S. J. (2012). Neighborhood diversity, metropolitan constraints, and household migration. American Sociological Review, 77, 325–353.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crowder, K. D., & South, S. J. (2008). Spatial dynamics of white flight: The effects of extralocal racial conditions on neighborhood out-migration. American Sociological Review, 73, 792–812.

  • Ellen, I. G. (2000). Sharing America’s neighborhoods: The prospects for stable racial integration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ellis, M., Holloway, S. R., Wright, R., & Fowler, C. S. (2012). Agents of change: Mixed-race households and the dynamics of neighborhood segregation in the United States. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 102, 549–570.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Emerson, M. O., Yancey, G., & Chai, K. J. (2001). Does race matter in residential segregation? Exploring the preferences of white Americans. American Sociological Review, 66, 922–935.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Farrell, C. R. (2005). Urban mosaics: Multiracial diversity and segregation in the American metropolis (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Department of Sociology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Farrell, C. R. (2008). Bifurcation, fragmentation or integration? The racial and geographical structure of US metropolitan segregation, 1990–2000. Urban Studies, 45, 467–499.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Farrell, C. R. (2016). Immigrant suburbanization and the shifting geographic structure of metropolitan segregation in the United States. Urban Studies, 53, 57–76.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Farrell, C. R., & Lee, B. A. (2011). Racial diversity and change in metropolitan neighborhoods. Social Science Research, 40, 1108–1123.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fischer, C. S., Stockmayer, G., Stiles, J., & Hout, M. (2004). Distinguishing the geographic levels and social dimensions of U.S. metropolitan segregation, 1960–2000. Demography, 41, 37–59.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Flippen, C., & Kim, E. (2015). Immigrant context and opportunity: New destinations and socioeconomic attainment among Asians in the United States. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 660, 175–198.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Folch, D. C., & Rey, S. J. (2016). The centralization index: A measure of local spatial segregation. Papers in Regional Science, 95, 555–576.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Foner, N. (Ed.) (2013). One out of three: Immigrant New York in the twenty-first century. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fowler, C. S. (2016). Segregation as a multi-scalar phenomenon and its implications for neighborhood-scale research: The case of South Seattle 1990–2010. Urban Geography, 37, 1–25.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Frey, W. H. (2015). Diversity explosion: How new racial demographics are remaking America. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frey, W. H., Wilson, J. H., Berube, A., & Singer, A. (2006). Tracking American trends into the twenty-first century: A field guide to the new metropolitan and micropolitan definitions. In A. Berube, B. Katz, & R. E. Lang (Eds.), Redefining urban and suburban America: Evidence from census 2000 (Vol. 3, pp. 191–234). Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

  • Friedman, S. (2008). Do declines in residential segregation mean stable neighborhood racial integration in metropolitan America? A research note. Social Science Research, 37, 920–933.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Galster, G., & Booza, J. (2007). The rise of the bipolar neighborhood. Journal of the American Planning Association, 73, 421–435.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hall, M. (2013). Residential integration on the new frontier: Immigrant segregation in established and new destinations. Demography, 50, 1873–1896.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hall, M., & Lee, B. A. (2010). How diverse are U.S. suburbs? Urban Studies, 47, 3–28.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hall, M., Tach, L., & Lee, B. A. (2016). Trajectories of ethnoracial diversity in American communities, 1980–2010. Population and Development Review, 42, 271–297.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hanlon, B., Vicino, T. J., & Short, J. R. (2006). The new metropolitan reality in the US: Rethinking the traditional model. Urban Studies, 43, 2129–2143.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Holloway, S. R., Wright, R., & Ellis, M. (2012). The racially fragmented city? Neighborhood racial segregation and diversity jointly considered. Professional Geographer, 64, 63–82.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Iceland, J. (2004). Beyond black and white: Metropolitan residential segregation in multi-ethnic America. Social Science Research, 33, 248–271.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Iceland, J., & Scopilliti, M. (2008). Immigrant residential segregation in U.S. metropolitan areas, 1990–2000. Demography, 45, 79–94.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Johnston, R., Poulsen, M., & Forrest, J. (2010). Moving on from indices, refocusing on mix: On measuring and understanding ethnic patterns of residential segregation. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 36, 697–706.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Johnston, R., Poulsen, M., & Forrest, J. (2014). Segregation matters, measurement matters. In C. D. Lloyd, I. G. Shuttleworth, & D. W. S. Wong (Eds.), Social-spatial segregation: Concepts, processes, and outcomes (pp. 13–44). Bristol, UK: Policy Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Krysan, M., & Bader, M. D. M. (2007). Perceiving the metropolis: Seeing the city through a prism of race. Social Forces, 86, 699–733.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Krysan, M., Couper, M. P., Farley, R., & Forman, T. A. (2009). Does race matter in neighborhood preferences? Results from a video experiment. American Journal of Sociology, 115, 527–529.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lang, R. E. (2003). Edgeless cities: Exploring the elusive metropolis. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lee, B. A., & Hughes, L. A. (2015). Bucking the trend: Is ethnoracial diversity declining in American communities? Population Research and Policy Review, 34, 113–139.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lee, B. A., Iceland, J., & Farrell, C. R. (2014). Is ethnoracial residential integration on the rise? Evidence from metropolitan and micropolitan America since 1980. In J. R. Logan (Ed.), Diversity and disparities: America enters a new century (pp. 415–456). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

  • Lee, B. A., Reardon, S. F., Firebaugh, G., Farrell, C. R., Matthews, S. A., & O’Sullivan, D. (2008). Beyond the census tract: Patterns and determinants of racial segregation at multiple geographic scales. American Sociological Review, 73, 766–791.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lee, J., & Bean, F. D. (2010). The diversity paradox: Immigration and the color line in twenty-first century America. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

  • Lichter, D. T. (2013). Integration or fragmentation? Racial diversity and the American future. Demography, 50, 359–391.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lichter, D. T., Parisi, D., & Taquino, M. C. (2015). Toward a new macro-segregation? Decomposing segregation within and between metropolitan cities and suburbs. American Sociological Review, 80, 843–873.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lindsay, J. M., & Singer, A. (2003). Changing faces: Immigrants and diversity in the twenty-first century. In H. J. Aaron, J. M. Lindsay, & P. S. Nivola (Eds.), Agenda for the nation (pp. 217–260). Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lloyd, C., Shuttleworth, I., & Wong, D. (Eds.) (2014). Social-spatial segregation: Concepts, processes and outcomes. Bristol, UK: Policy Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Logan, J. R., & Zhang, C. (2010). Global neighborhoods: New pathways to diversity and separation. American Journal of Sociology, 115, 1069–1109.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Logan, J. R., Stults, B. J., & Farley, R. (2004). Segregation of minorities in the metropolis: Two decades of change. Demography, 41, 1–22.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Massey, D. S., & Denton, N. A. (1988). The dimensions of residential segregation. Social Forces, 67, 281–315.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Massey, D. S., & Denton, N. A. (1993). American apartheid: Segregation and the making of the underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Monkkonen, P., & Zhang, X. (2014). Innovative measurement of spatial segregation: Comparative evidence from Hong Kong and San Francisco. Regional Science and Urban Economics, 47, 99–111.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morrill, R. L. (1991). On the measure of geographical segregation. Geography Research Forum, 11, 25–36.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pais, J. F., South, S. J., & Crowder, K. D. (2009). White flight revisited: A multiethnic perspective on neighborhood out-migration. Population Research and Policy Review, 28, 321–346.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Parisi, D., Lichter, D. T., & Taquino, M. C. (2011). Multi-scale residential segregation: Black exceptionalism and America’s changing color line. Social Forces, 89, 829–852.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Parisi, D., Lichter, D. T., & Taquino, M. C. (2015). The buffering hypothesis: Growing diversity and declining black-white segregation in America's cities, suburbs, and small towns? Sociological Science, 2, 125–157.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pendall, R. (2000). Local land use regulation and the chain of exclusion. Journal of the American Planning Association, 66, 125–142.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Peri, G. (2012). The effect of immigration on productivity: Evidence from U.S. states. Review of Economics and Statistics, 94, 348–358.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Portes, A., & Zhou, M. (1993). The new second generation: Segmented assimilation and its variants. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 530, 74–96.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Price, M., & Benton-Short, L. (Eds.) (2008). Migrants to the metropolis: The rise of immigrant gateway cities. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Putnam, R. D. (2007). E pluribus unum: Diversity and community in the twenty-first century. Scandinavian Political Studies, 30, 137–174.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reardon, S. F., & Bischoff, K. (2011). Income inequality and income segregation. American Journal of Sociology, 116, 1092–1153.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reardon, S. F., Farrell, C. R., Matthews, S. A., O’Sullivan, D., Bischoff, K., & Firebaugh, G. (2009). Race and space in the 1990s: Changes in the geographic scale of racial residential segregation, 1990–2000. Social Science Research, 38, 55–70.

  • Reardon, S. F., & Firebaugh, G. (2002). Measures of multigroup segregation. Sociological Methodology, 32, 33–67.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reardon, S. F., Firebaugh, G., O’Sullivan, D., & Matthews, S. A. (2006). A new approach to measuring socio-spatial economic segregation. Paper presented at the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth Conference, Joensuu, Finland.

  • Reardon, S. F., Matthews, S. A., O’Sullivan, D., Lee, B. A., Firebaugh, G., Farrell, C. R., & Bischoff, K. (2008). The geographic scale of metropolitan segregation. Demography, 45, 489–514.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reardon, S. F., & O’Sullivan, D. (2004). Measures of spatial segregation. Sociological Methodology, 34, 121–162.

  • Rothwell, J., & Massey, D. S. (2009). The effect of density zoning on racial segregation in U.S. urban areas. Urban Affairs Review, 44, 779–806.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Singer, A. (2005). The rise of new immigrant gateways: Historical flows, recent settlement trends. In A. Berube, B. Katz, & R. E. Lang (Eds.), Redefining urban and suburban America: Evidence from census 2000 (Vol. 2, pp. 41–86). Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

  • Singer, A., Hardwick, S. W., & Brettell, C. B. (Eds.) (2008). Twenty-first century gateways: Immigrant incorporation in suburban America. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Spielman, S. E., & Logan, J. R. (2013). Using high-resolution population data to identify neighborhoods and establish their boundaries. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 103, 67–84.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Squires, G. D., & Kubrin, C. E. (2006). Privileged places: Race, residence, and the structure of opportunity. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, M. A., Santos, R., Levy, D. K., Wissoker, D., Aranda, C., & Pitingolo, R. (2013). Housing discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities 2012. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

    Google Scholar 

  • U.S. Census Bureau (2014). Historical income tables: Households [Current Population Survey data file]. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/household/

  • Waldinger, R., & Lee, J. (2001). New immigrants in urban America. In R. Waldinger (Ed.), Strangers at the gates: New immigrants in urban America (pp. 30–79). Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walker, K. (2016). Locating neighborhood diversity in the American metropolis. Urban Studies. Advance online publication. doi:10.1177/0042098016643481

  • White, M. J. (1986). Segregation and diversity measures in population distribution. Population Index, 52, 198–221.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, J. H., & Singer, A. (2011). Immigrants in 2010 metropolitan America: A decade of change (Metropolitan Policy Program report). Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, S. G., Plane, D. A., Mackun, P. J., Fischetti, T. R., & Goworowska, J. (2012). Patterns of metropolitan and micropolitan population change: 2000 to 2010 (Census Special Report, No. C2010SR-01). Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wong, D. W. S. (1998). Measuring multiethnic spatial segregation. Urban Geography, 19, 77–87.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wong, D. W. S., Reibel, M., & Dawkins, C. J. (2007). Introduction—Segregation and neighborhood change: Where are we after more than a half-century of formal analysis. Urban Geography, 28, 305–311.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wright, R. A., Ellis, M., Holloway, S. R., & Wong, S. (2014). Patterns of racial diversity and segregation in the United States: 1990–2010. Professional Geographer, 66, 173–182.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Yosef Bodovski and Michael Martin for their able technical assistance. Support for this research has been provided by a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01HD074605, PI Barrett Lee). Additional support comes from the Population Research Institute of The Pennsylvania State University, which receives infrastructure funding from NICHD (2P2CHD041025). The content of this article is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not reflect the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Population Research Institute, The Pennsylvania State University, 601 Oswald Tower, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Christopher S. Fowler, Barrett A. Lee & Stephen A. Matthews

  2. Department of Geography, The Pennsylvania State University, 302 Walker Building, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Christopher S. Fowler

  3. Department of Sociology, The Pennsylvania State University, 211 Oswald Tower, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Barrett A. Lee & Stephen A. Matthews

  4. Department of Anthropology, The Pennsylvania State University, 409 Carpenter Building, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Stephen A. Matthews

Authors
  1. Christopher S. Fowler
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Barrett A. Lee
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Stephen A. Matthews
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christopher S. Fowler.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Fowler, C.S., Lee, B.A. & Matthews, S.A. The Contributions of Places to Metropolitan Ethnoracial Diversity and Segregation: Decomposing Change Across Space and Time. Demography 53, 1955–1977 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-016-0517-3

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-016-0517-3

Keywords

Search

Navigation