The nature and origins of dually diverse neighborhoods

This study investigates the extent to which neighborhoods that are both racially and economically diverse, hereafter referred to as dually diverse neighborhoods, exist within the metropolitan landscape of the United States and what factors contribute to the emergence of such neighborhoods. Using the Neighborhood Change Database, this study defines what a diverse neighborhood is and gives a descriptive portrait of the characteristics of these neighborhoods. The entropy index (H) is used as the measure of neighborhood diversity because of its ability to take into account the presence of more than two groups, unlike other more commonly used measures of segregation or diversity. Dually diverse neighborhoods are operationalized as those neighborhoods having an entropy score greater than or equal to 0.69 on the racial measure and an entropy score greater than or equal to 0.87 on the income measure, which corresponds to a neighborhood archetype that is an easily understood, intuitively appealing mixture of both income and racial-ethnic groups. Results indicate that the presence of dually diverse neighborhoods has nearly doubled each decade between 1970 and 2000 and that more than half of dually diverse neighborhoods maintained their integrated status from 1990 to 2000. Regression analyses probing the predictors of dually diverse neighborhoods in metro areas examine whether metropolitan income distributions, metropolitan racial-ethnic diversity, household preferences for neighborhood diversity, immigration and metropolitan growth, housing market characteristics, and public policy interventions are correlated with the incidence of dually diverse neighborhoods in metro areas. Findings suggest that the most important predictor of dually diverse neighborhoods is the incidence of racially diverse neighborhoods in metro areas. The incidence of racially diverse neighborhoods in metro areas is in turn influenced by the presence of recently-arriving immigrants and growing income distribution congruence amongst the four racial-ethnic groups in the study. Implications for public policy are discussed, as well as a discussion of how this work compliments and expands the extant knowledge on diverse neighborhoods

Income Diversity Within Neighborhoods and Very Low-Income Families

The past decades have witnessed increasing concern over the family ills engendered by neighborhoods inhabited overwhelmingly by families with limited resources. This study focuses on a different sort of residential context—neighborhoods with substantial income mixing—and the extent to which very low-income (VLI) families—those earning less than 50 percent of the area median income (AMI)—live in them. The study’s primary units of analysis are the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the United States, according to the 2000 Census, and the secondary units of analysis are census tracts. The study specifies six mutually exclusive income groups based on the ratios relative to AMI, as defined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. It also specifies four groups of neighborhoods according to their diversity of the six income groups, as measured by an entropy index. The descriptive results show that in 2000 (1) most neighborhoods had high diversity, although a decline is apparent in the overall income diversity of neighborhoods and in the share comprising high-diversity neighborhoods; (2) no neighborhoods with median incomes of less than 50 percent of AMI had high diversity; (3) 19 percent of all high-diversity neighborhoods (on average) consist of VLI families and 65 percent of all VLI families live in high-diversity neighborhoods, although both percentages have declined since 1970; (4) 5 percent of VLI families live in neighborhoods with median incomes of less than 50 percent of AMI, twice the percentage of 1970 but lower than in 1990; and (5) exposure of VLI families to other VLI families and moderate-income groups has steadily fallen since 1970 and concomitantly increased for families that have very high incomes (VHIs); indeed, the exposure to VHI families is approximately the same as exposure to other VLI families. This article addresses the mixed implications of these trends for the potential socioeconomic mobility of VLI families. This research was presented at Wayne State University\u27s 2010 Sociology Student Research & Awards Day. Presentation slides are included as supplemental materials. This research was supported by a grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department

Income Diversity Within Neighborhoods and Very Low-Income Families

Development and Research. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department. The past decades have witnessed increasing concern over the family ills engendered by neighborhoods inhabited overwhelmingly by families with limited resources. This study focuses on a different sort of residential context—neighborhoods with substantial income mixing—and the extent to which very low-income (VLI) families—those earning less than 50 percent of the area median income (AMI)—live in them. The study’s primary units of analysis are the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the United States, according to the 2000 Census, and the secondary units of analysis are census tracts. The study specifies six mutually exclusive income groups based on the ratios relative to AMI, as defined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. It also specifies four groups of neighborhoods according to their diversity of the six income groups, as measured by an entropy index. The descriptive results show that in 2000 (1) most neighborhoods had high diversity, although a decline is apparent in the overall incom