Metropolitan Heterogeneity and Minority Neighborhood Attainment: Spatial Assimilation or Place Stratification?

Jeremy Pais, University of Connecticut
Scott J. South, University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY)
Kyle Crowder, University of Washington

This research examines metropolitan-area variation in the ability of mobile blacks, Hispanics, and whites to convert their income into two types of neighborhood outcomes—neighborhood racial composition and socioeconomic status. For destination tract racial composition, we find strong support for the "weak version" of place stratification theory; relative to whites, the effect of individual income on the share of the destination tract that is non-Hispanic white is stronger for blacks and Hispanics, but even the highest earning minority group members move to tracts that are "less white" than the tracts that the highest-earning whites move to. In contrast, for neighborhoods characterized by SES, we find substantial heterogeneity across metropolitan areas. A slight majority of metropolitan areas support the "strong version" of place stratification theory. However, a nontrivial number of metropolitan areas also evince support for spatial assimilation theory, where the highest-earning minorities achieve neighborhood parity with the highest-earning whites.