Comment on ‘Metropolitan Growth, Inequality, and Neighborhood Segregation by Income’

Publication Date: December 2006

Publisher: Furman Center for Real Estate

Author(s): Ingrid Gould Ellen

Research Area: Social conditions

Keywords: neighborhoods; segregation; Community and Economic Development

Type: Article

Abstract:

Over the last three decades, residential segregation by income has become an increasingly important feature of the U.S. metropolitan landscape. From 1970 to 2000, income sorting grew in large cities. In the 1980s almost all American metropolitan areas experienced a rise in segregation of the rich from the poor, though these changes were slightly offset by modest declines in segregation during the 1990s. More than 85 percent of the U.S. metropolitan population lived in an area that was more segregated by income in 2000 than in 1970. The time trend in residential segregation by income hints that income inequality may play an explanatory role.