New RSF-Funded Dataset “Segregation Index” Now Publicly Available

May 19, 2022

The Segregation Index, a joint project between University of Southern California and Stanford University has recently launched. Funded in part by a Russell Sage Foundation grant, the Segregation Index is a comprehensive resource for tracking neighborhood and school segregation in the United States.

Key findings from the Segregation Index on U.S. school segregation:

  • In large school districts, White-Black segregation between schools increased 35% and White-Asian segregation more than doubled from 1991 to 2020. White-Hispanic segregation was higher in 2020 than in 1991, peaking in the late 2000s.
  • Three large school districts – the Los Angeles Unified School District, Philadelphia, and New York City – all fall in the top 10 most racially segregated school districts for White-Black, White-Hispanic, and White-Asian segregation based on average levels from 1991-2020.
  • In large school districts, segregation between poor students (students who are eligible for free lunch) and non-poor students has increased by 47% since 1991.
  • In 2020, the poverty rate in the average poor student’s school was about 20 percentage points higher than in the average non-poor student’s school in the same district.

Learn more about the Segregation Index and its findings.

Read the full announcement.

RSF

RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal of original empirical research articles by both established and emerging scholars.

Grants

The Russell Sage Foundation offers grants and positions in our Visiting Scholars program for research.

Newsletter

Join our mailing list for email updates.