Separate, But How Unequal? Ethnic Residential Stratification, 1980 to 1990

Much recent scholarship has focused on inequality in the socioeconomic status of neighborhoods in which different racial and ethnic groups are concentrated. However, the most widely used measures of residential inequality merely describe the extent to which groups are nominally differentiated in residential space. I use 1980 and 1990 U.S. Census data to calculate levels of and changes in residential stratification—the degree to which members of one group tend to live in more advantaged neighborhoods than members of another group—between whites and blacks, Latinos, and Asians. Results both confirm and qualify conventional interpretations of residential inequality when measured as nominal–level segregation. For example, although in 1990 Latinos and Asians were similarly and only moderately segregated from whites, Asians experienced dramatically lower levels of neighborhood disadvantage. I also find that although levels of segregation were nearly identical in central cities and suburban rings, residential stratification was much lower for suburban residents than for their central city counterparts. I conclude by discussing implications of the findings for theoretical and empirical research on residential inequality.