Does Rising Income Bring Integration? New Results for Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians in 1990

Abstract

In this paper we update earlier work on racial and ethnic segregation by income to test assertions made by some observers that segregation is now largely a matter of class rather than race. Using the Summary Tape Files of the 1990 Census of Population, we measure the segregation of Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians within four categories of income: poor, lower middle class, upper middle class, and affluent. For all metropolitan areas containing at least 5000 members of the group in question, we compute indices of dissimilarity and interaction between minority members of a certain income and Whites of all income, thus measuring the extent of overall racial/ethnic segregation by social class. We find that Black residential segregation persists at high levels across all income levels, and that the gap between Blacks and other minority groups actually increases as income rises.