Distinguishing the Levels and Dimensions of U.S. Metropolitan Segregation, 1960-2000

Claude S. Fischer, University of California, Berkeley
Gretchen Stockmayer, University of California, Berkeley
Jon Stiles, University of California, Berkeley
Michael Hout, University of California, Berkeley

We assess trends in residential segregation in the United States from 1960 to 2000 along several dimensions of ancestry, class, and life cycle, presenting a new method for attributing segregation to nested geographical levels. Segregation for metropolitan America is measured using the Theil index which is additively decomposed into contributions of regional, metropolitan, center city-suburban, place, and tract segregation. This distinguishes whether groups live apart because members cluster in different neighborhoods, communities, metropolitan areas, or regions. Segregation of blacks decreased substantially after 1960 largely because neighborhoods integrated, but the foreign-born became more segregated largely because they concentrated in particular metropolitan areas. Class segregation increased after 1970, mainly because the affluent increasingly clustered in specific metropolitan areas and specific municipalities within metropolitan areas. The unmarried increasingly congregated in center cities. The main purpose of this paper is to describe and illustrate this multi-level approach to studying segregation. (Full text at http://ucdata.berkeley.edu/rsfcensus/wp.html)