Spatial Inequality, Neighborhood Mobility, and Residential Segregation

This paper is concerned with stability and change in neighborhoods in large metropolitan areas. During the past 20 years, economic inequality among neighborhoods has grown and may be a source of widening inequality in other realms as well (e.g., Reich 1991; Jargowsky 1996). Numerous studies have focused on the possible effects of residential neighborhoods on a variety of social and economic outcomes (e.g., Brewster 1994; Brooks-Gunn, Duncan, and Aber 1997). Likewise, persistent residential segregation among racial and ethnic groups is implicated in enduring racial and ethnic inequality (e.g., Massey and Denton 1993). Yet our understanding of the dynamics of how neighborhoods are formed and how they change remains limited.