Race Still Matters: The Minimal Role of Income and Housing Cost as Causes of Housing Segregation in St. Louis, 1990
Abstract
Two techniques are used to examine the extent to which racial housing segregation in the St. Louis metropolitan area in 1990 is attributable to income and housing cost differences between African-Americans and whites. Measurement of segregation within household-income categories revealed that, at all income levels, African-Americans and whites with similar incomes are about as segregated as African-Americans and whites overall. Indirect standardizations based on housing cost and tenure reveal that if those were the only causes of segregation, African-Americans and whites would be far less segregated than they are. The proportion of segregation attributable to such differences is even lower in 1990 than in past censuses.
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1.
1. The 83%-17% split and the African-American and white percentages for specific income groups refer to the portion of the St. Louis population that is either African-American or white; the exposure indices were computed on the basis of population counts of African-Americans and whites only. This makes little practical difference, because approximately 99% of the St. Louis area's population was identified as either African-American or white in the 1990 census.
2.
2. Persons wishing to obtain the housing cost and tenure categories in 1990 and 1980 and the distribution of whites and African-Americans among these categories in the St. Louis metropolitan area in each census year may do so by writing to the author at the Department of Sociology and Social Work, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, Edwardsville, IL 62026-1455.
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Article first published: November 1995
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