Working Paper #567
Status Caste Exchange: Preferences for Race and Poverty Status of Neighbors in Large U.S. Metropolitan Areas, 1970-2000
Janice Fanning Madden
Demographics Ethnic Factors United States Urban
This paper examines the effects of race and income of neighbors on racial segregation using consistently-bounded census tract data for 36 large metropolitan areas from 1970 to 2000. For Northeastern and Midwestern MAs, with the greatest levels of racial segregation in the nation, racial integration occurs consistent with status caste exchange: non poor African Americans and poor non African Americans are shifting to the same neighborhoods. A fixed effect model analyzes how a census tract’s end of the decade proportions of the metropolitan area’s population in each race and poverty status group are affected by the proportions of all other race and poverty status groups resident in a census tract at the start of the decade, the rate of change in those proportions over the decade, and other census tract characteristics that change between 1970 and 2000.