Socio-Economic Segregation in Large Cities in France and the United States

This working paper calculates measures of the level of socioeconomic segregation in large metropolitan areas (cities and their surrounding suburbs) in the United States and France. The authors define “large” metropolitan areas as city-suburb combinations with a population of greater than one million. They use tract data from the American Community Survey (2006-2010) and data from the French Census of 2008 and the French Ministry of Finance. The results reveal a significantly higher level of socioeconomic segregation in large American than in French cities. American cities are more segregated than French cities on all three measures considered here: income, employment, and education. This finding holds with measures that account for different distributions of income, unemployment, and education across the two countries. The researchers also find (1) a strong pattern of low-income neighborhoods in central cities, and high-income neighborhoods in suburbs in the United States, but not in France; (2) that high-income persons are the most segregated group in both countries; (3) that the shares of neighborhood income differences that can be explained by neighborhood race-ethnic composition are similar in France and the United States, suggesting that racial segregation cannot account for much of the higher level of U.S. socioeconomic segregation

Relationships Between Religion and Intolerance Towards Muslims and Immigrants in Europe:A Multilevel Analysis

This paper examines relationships between religiosity and intolerance towards Muslims and immigrants among Europeans living in non-Muslim majority countries by applying multilevel modeling to European Values Study data (wave four, 2010). Thus relationships across 44 national contexts are analyzed. The analysis found large between-country differences in the overall levels of intolerance towards immigrants and Muslims. Eastern Europeans tend to be more intolerant than Western Europeans. In most countries Muslims are less accepted than immigrants,—a finding which reflects that in post-9/11 Europe Islamophobia is prevalent and many still see Muslims with suspicion. A key result is that believing matters for the citizen’s attitudes towards Muslims and immigrants. Across Europe, traditional and modern fuzzy beliefs in a Higher Being are strongly negatively related to intolerance towards immigrants and Muslims, while fundamentalism is positively related to both targets of intolerance. Religious practice and denominational belonging on the other hand matter far less for the citizen’s propensity to dislike the two out-groups. With the only exception of non-devout Protestants who do not practice their religion, members of religious denominations are not more intolerant than non-members. The findings are valid for the vast majority of countries although countries differ in the magnitude of the effects

Segregation as a Source of Contextual Advantage: A Formal Theory with Application to American Cities

A frequently cited model of why segregation contributes to inequality is that segregation increases the level of contextual advantage of advantaged segregated groups and the level of contextual disadvantage of disadvantaged segregated groups. This paper provides a formal demographic model of this process. The model begins with two groups that differ along a dimension of average advantage and disadvantage, for instance, two racial groups that differ in their poverty rates. The model illustrates how the contextual advantages and disadvantages from segregation are affected by a series of demographic conditions: group relative size, group advantage-disadvantage rates, group effects on advantage-disadvantage rates of nongroup neighbors, and advantage-disadvantage effects on group contact. The paper outlines a series of eleven conclusions from the theoretical model and applies the theoretical model to understanding racial segregation effects on racial group neighborhood poverty contact in American cities

Six-Country Discrimination in Hiring Meta-Analysis Data

"RDS" (R format) file containing replication data for Quillian and Lee, "Trends in Racial and Ethnic Discrimination in Hiring in Six Western Countries", PNAS 2023. "Code" subdirectory includes code, output, and a pdf file describing code and output. Link to article: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.221287512