This is a study of how neighborhoods are changing their racial/ethnic and income composition as a result of mobility choices made by individual families. The consequent changes in segregation and disparate local environments for people of different race, ethnicity, and income have substantial potential consequences for their health and well-being. The study takes advantage of access to a new data resource ? linked records of as many as 90% of enumerated Americans in 2000 and 2010 ? to pursue two main aims:
Aim 1) To assess the balance of flows of persons into and out of neighborhoods that are associated with specific neighborhood-level changes in race/ethnicity and income levels that we observe, such as increasing concentration of poverty or growing racial/ethnic diversity.
Aim 2) To model the selectivity of people's locations in 2000 and their post- 2000 movements in neighborhoods, based both on how places appeared in 2000 and how they were changing in the next decade. The proposed study builds on a growing body of research that breaks with binary conceptualizations of segregation (e.g., the longstanding emphasis on the white-black divide or a simple distinction between poor and non-poor neighborhoods) to acknowledge the multigroup composition of metropolitan America and the variety of kinds of social class changes that are occurring. It will make use of confidential individual-level data in a Census Research Data Center (RDC) that has been linked between the 2000 and 2010 censuses to track changes in composition in changing neighborhoods (decomposing net change into numbers of persons in each group who arrived, left, or stayed). It will also to identify the personal/household characteristics associated with each type of mobility. This study of neighborhood change and residential mobility is highly relevant to major contemporary social concerns related to persistent minority segregation and increasing neighborhood diversity. Research conducted in the RDC will demonstrate the value of the Census Bureau's investment in record linkage and increase the likelihood of continued efforts of this kind.
This project will study the changes in neighborhood racial/ethnic and socioeconomic composition that occurred in the 2000-2010 decade in all metropolitan areas of the United States. It will decompose net neighborhood changes into the flows of in-movers and leavers in different kinds of neighborhoods and evaluate the characteristics of persons involved in flows in each direction. Because neighborhoods are increasingly understood as having major effects on the health and well being of residents, this research will provide fundamental insights for health and population research, education, and policy- making.
