View Research by Author - Mitchell S. Tobin

Citation URL: http://www.urban.org/MitchellSTobin

This report examines the intersection of increasing immigration and growing concentrations of poverty, defined as census tracts where at least 40 percent of the population is poor. Two focus areas of the study are (1) the effects of immigration on the composition of the poor urban population and (2) the characteristics of immigrants living in concentrated poverty and their implications for the debate over the "quality" of immigrants and their prospects for integration. Using the Urban Institute's Underclass Database, the study analyzes the changes in the concentrated poverty population due to immigration and explores the implications of these changes for policy.

This analysis uses census tract-level data to measure the segregation of the poor in large U.S. metropolitan areas in 1970, 1980, and 1990. Two measures of segregation are used—the indices of dissimilarity and isolation. The report begins with a description of these two indices and the data used for the analysis. The subsequent discussion presents a cross-sectional analysis of the isolation of the poor in the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas in 1990. The next section covers how segregation of the poor changed from 1970 to 1990 in these areas, and finally the report summarizes the findings of the analysis.

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