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Quantification of Ethnic and Racial Residential Segregation: Analysis of 2015 U.S. Census Tracts
Citation:
Buck, K., Kevin Summers, AND L. Smith. Quantification of Ethnic and Racial Residential Segregation: Analysis of 2015 U.S. Census Tracts. American Association of Geographers - Annual Meeting 2018, New Orleans, Louisiana, April 10 - 14, 2018.
Impact/Purpose:
The purpose of this research is to develop an index that will contribute to neighborhood level analysis of existing well-being and resilience measures. Variations in residential demographics lead to potential disparities in these outcomes that are otherwise not explained at the county level. Understanding how and where certain populations are distributed within a county will help to both explain county-level error and identify areas in need of additional resources to improve the overall well-being and/or resilience of the county.
Description:
The presence and distribution of demographic enclaves, or places defined by distinctly different group compositions than surrounding places, are a well-studied occurrence in urban areas of the United States. With the changing composition of cities and surrounding suburban areas, the revisiting of a more expansive identification and analysis of residential segregation is long overdue. Using the framework originally developed by Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton in 1988, this research reconstructs and expands the concept of enclaves to encompass the entire U.S. Census tracts are used as the unit of analysis, with counties serving as the aggregation units. The results are a multi-dimensional index, representing evenness, exposure, concentration, centralization, and clustering. This index represents residential segregation for 6 major demographic characteristics (Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, American Indian/Alaskan Native, Asian, Middle Eastern/North African, and Non-English Speaking. The index will be used to identify neighborhood-level variations that may contribute to differential outcomes in human well-being and resilience assessments across the U.S.