Racial residential segregation persists in most metropolitan areas in the U.S., and most notably in rust belts cities in the Midwest and Northeast. Using newly-collected survey and qualitative data in Chicago and Detroit, we propose to address current controversies and gaps in our knowledge about how race/ethnicity, racial attitudes, and experiences with discrimination, in concert with other key social, demographic, and economic characteristics do or do not shape individuals' housing-related strategies, experiences, and preferences that, in the aggregate, have the potential to perpetuate or reduce residential segregation. Our data include a number of new measures of residential preferences and a richer range of predictor variables than has been available, to provide better tests of the competing theories about the factors underlying these preferences. These include respondent evaluations of videos of actual neighborhoods, efficient measures using maps that assess respondent evaluations of actual communities, and an extension of Charles' (2000) technique to measure preferences in a multi-ethnic context. After developing the models of preferences we will, in turn, test the impact of preferences on the current racial composition of the individual's neighborhood. Another key innovation in our study is the presence of a rich set of data (both quantitative and qualitative) that makes possible analyses pertinent to the largely unaddressed question of whether there are racial/ethnic differences in housing search strategies, experiences, and locations. A variety of deleterious health and other consequences of residential segregation for African Americans have already been identified. These range from disparities in infant and adult mortality rates, educational attainment, employment, death rates from homicide, rates of single motherhood, and the accumulation of equity in homes. Understanding the reasons behind persistent racial residential segregation is an important step in addressing the health and social consequences of such segregation. Our research focus is on individual- level attitudes, experiences, and preferences with regard to this process, and will provide insight into how people make decisions about where to live. ? ? ?
| Swaroop, Sapna; Krysan, Maria (2011) The determinants of neighborhood satisfaction: racial proxy revisited. Demography 48:1203-29 |
| Krysan, Maria; Couper, Mick P; Farley, Reynolds et al. (2009) Does race matter in neighborhood preferences? Results from a video experiment. AJS 115:527-59 |
| Krysan, Maria (2008) Does race matter in the search for housing? An exploratory study of search strategies, experiences, and locations. Soc Sci Res 37:581-603 |
