Residential Segregation and Low-Income Working Families

Abstract

Historically, residential segregation constrained where minorities could live, contributing to disparities in education, employment, and wealth. Researchers interested in the well-being and future prospects of low-income working families have not yet explored how their residential patterns may vary across racial and ethnic lines or considered the implications of these patterns. Therefore, this paper explores differences in neighborhood characteristics among white, black, and Hispanic low-income working families. The findings suggest that policies aimed at reducing the persistent disadvantages facing minority low-income working families need to address the ways the neighborhoods in which minorities live may be compounding these disadvantages.

Introduction

To date, researchers interested in the well-being and future prospects of low-income working families have not explored the question of where these families live, or how residential patterns may vary across racial and ethnic lines. Historically, residential segregation has constrained location choices for minorities and has contributed to persistent disparities in education, employment, and wealth. This paper explores differences in neighborhood characteristics among white, black, and Hispanic low-income working families.

Location patterns among low-income working families reflect long-standing patterns well-documented for U.S. households more generally:

• Most low-income working families live in metropolitan areas, and slightly more live in suburban areas than in central cities.
• Whites are the least likely to live in central cities, while blacks are the most likely.
• Almost all white low-income working families live in majority-white neighborhoods, compared with about a third of black and Hispanic low-income working families.
• One-third of black low-income working families and one-fifth of Hispanics live in high-poverty neighborhoods, compared with only 3 percent of non-Hispanic whites.
• More than half of Hispanic low-income working families live in neighborhoods that experienced big increases in subprime lending, compared with less than half of blacks and less than a third of whites.

Other research on the effects of neighborhood environment suggests that these differences warrant more attention by both policymakers and researchers. Policies aimed at reducing the persistent disadvantages facing minority low-income working families need to address how the neighborhoods in which they live may be compounding these disadvantages, both by compensating for the deficits of poor and minority neighborhoods and by helping low-income working families move to neighborhoods offering greater access to opportunity.

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