Movin' on Up? Racial Inequality in Children's Neighborhood Socioeconomic Status

Jeffrey M. Timberlake, University of Chicago

How different are the neighborhoods in which Black and White children live? Does racial inequality in neighborhood context change as children experience residential mobility? In this paper I use hierarchical linear modeling techniques to estimate effects of household- and metropolitan area-level characteristics on racial differences in children's neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) and on neighborhood SES returns to residential mobility. I find that the vast majority of the variation in children's neighborhood SES is within, and not between metropolitan areas. I also find large racial gaps in children's average neighborhood SES, yet statistically nonsignificant gaps in neighborhood SES returns to residential mobility. Although Black and White children live in neighborhoods with vastly unequal levels of social and physical resources, there does not appear to be strong empirical evidence that variation in constraints on Black residential mobility is associated with variation in racial inequality in children's neighborhood SES across metropolitan areas.