Income inequality and income segregation

This article investigates how the growth in income inequality from 1970 to 2000 affected patterns of income segregation along three dimensions: the spatial segregation of poverty and affluence, race-specific patterns of income segregation, and the geographic scale of income segregation. The evidence reveals a robust relationship between income inequality and income segregation, an effect that is larger for black families than for white families. In addition, income inequality affects income segregation primarily through its effect on the large-scale spatial segregation of affluence rather than by affecting the spatial segregation of poverty or by altering small-scale patterns of income segregation.     

Income inequality, race, and child well-being: an aggregate analysis in the 50 United States

Interest in income inequality as a predictor of health has exploded since the mid-1990s. Recent analyses suggest, however, that the effect of income inequality on population health is not robust to a control for the racial composition of the population. That observation raises two interpretational questions. First, does income inequality have an independent effect on population health? Second, what does the effect of racial composition on population health mean? We use data from the Urban Institute's Assessing the New Federalism project and the Kids Count Databook to evaluate the aggregate effects of income inequality on diverse measures of child well-being (e.g., infant mortality, high school drop-out rates) in the 50 U.S. states. We replicate the finding that, net of the racial/ethnic composition of the population, the effects of income inequality are not significant. Moreover, the effects of racial composition on child well-being appear to be compositional (i.e., they reflect the less positive outcomes observed among racial/ethnic minorities) rather than contextual (i.e., representing the independent influence of social context). Whereas cross-level effects are still possible, our results cast doubt on the health relevance of these aggregate characteristics of the population.     

Uneven Development and Local Inequality in the U.S. South: The Role of Outside Investment,Landed Elites,and Racial Dynamics

This paper develops a historically contingent understanding of patterns of uneven economic development in the U.S. South. We conceptualize spatial variation in economic development and its consequences for inequality to be embedded in both local and international dynamics. The character of local economic development, it is argued, reflects the organizational base and heterogeneity of local elites, the divisions and relative power of nonelites, and the embeddedness of the local political economy in national and world systems of politics and production. These ideas are developed and made historically and spatially specific through an analysis of uneven development in one Southern state, North Carolina. Our findings suggest that contemporary patterns of uneven development and the resulting income deprivations and inequality reflect conditional interactions between elite economic projects and racial divisions within the working class. We find that outside investment seems to reproduce rather than disrupt local patterns of inequality and poverty.     

Residence and Income Inequality: Effects on Mortality Among U.S. Counties

Abstract Despite lower average incomes, greater percentages living in poverty, lower levels of health insurance, less preventive health care, and poorer health status, nonmetropolitan residents have been found to experience lower mortality than their metropolitan counterparts. Several pathways through which residence influences mortality have been proposed. The objective of this study is to examine the effects of income inequality on residential differentials in mortality. Using data from the Compressed Mortality File for counties in the coterminous United States for 1990, we estimate weighted least squares models of total mortality for 3,067 counties, and separately for metropolitan and nonmetropolitan counties. Mortality is lower in nonmetropolitan counties than in metropolitan counties, once rates are standardized for age, sex, and race. Moreover, income inequality exerts stronger effects in nonmetro counties, an effect that persists when per capita income, median household size, and racial composition are controlled. The percentage of the population that is black exerts an independent effect on mortality in both metro and non‐metro counties.     

Investigating the Relationship Between Real Estate Agents,Segregation, and House Prices: Steering and Upselling in New York State

This article leverages a unique data set, recently developed regression methods, and qualitative interviews to investigate the multiple ways real estate agents produce housing inequality. We find that the clustering of agents in and around certain neighborhoods correlates positively with house prices. Our results also show a significant relationship between agent concentration and racial segregation. Our qualitative data reveal how agents engage in steering and upselling. The findings enhance our understanding of mechanisms in the housing market, and provide more empirical clarity on the role real estate agents play in asset and place inequality.     

Social Heterogeneity and Volunteering in U.S. Cities

In this research we explore the relationship between social heterogeneity and volunteering across U.S. metropolitan areas testing a theory that race heterogeneity, racial segregation, and income inequality are negatively associated with the rate of volunteering. Theorizing that social heterogeneity will have different effects for religious and secular volunteering rates, we analyze them separately. We use nonlinear multilevel models to analyze nearly 200,000 individuals across 248 cities, controlling for nonprofits per capita, religious congregations per capita, proportion of the population with college degrees, and the family poverty rate. While much of the intercity variation in volunteering is due to the composition of the population living in each city, we find general support for the predicted negative effect of social heterogeneity on volunteering. However, the effects vary by volunteering type. Race heterogeneity is negatively related only to secular volunteering, racial segregation is negatively related to both general volunteering and secular volunteering, and income inequality is negatively related to all types of volunteering.     

Emerging Patterns of Hispanic Residential Segregation: Lessons from Rural and Small‐Town America

The past two decades have ushered in a period of widespread spatial diffusion of Hispanics well beyond traditional metropolitan gateways. This article examines emerging patterns of racial and ethnic residential segregation in new Hispanic destinations over the 1990–2010 period, linking county, place, and block data from the 1990, 2000, and 2010 decennial censuses. Our multiscalar analyses of segregation are framed by classical models of immigrant assimilation and alternative models of place stratification. We ask whether Hispanics are integrating spatially with the native population and whether recent demographic and economic processes have eroded or perpetuated racial boundaries in nonmetropolitan areas. We show that Hispanic residential segregation from whites is often exceptionally high and declining slowly in rural counties and communities. New Hispanic destinations, on average, have higher Hispanic segregation levels than established gateway communities. The results also highlight microscale segregation patterns within rural places and in the open countryside (i.e., outside places), a result that is consistent with emerging patterns of “white flight.” Observed estimates of Hispanic‐white segregation across fast‐growing nonmetropolitan counties often hide substantial heterogeneity in residential segregation. Divergent patterns of rural segregation reflect local‐area differences in population dynamics, economic inequality, and the county employment base (using Economic Research Service functional specialization codes). Illustrative maps of Hispanic boom counties highlight spatially uneven patterns of racial diversity. They also provide an empirical basis for our multivariate analyses, which show that divergent patterns of local‐area segregation often reflect spatial variation in employment across different industrial sectors.     

GENDER,MORTALITY, AND CORPOREAL INEQUALITY

Most previous empirical analyses of gender inequality have focused on modern economic indicators such as income. The advancement of theory on gender stratification requires detailed analysis of indicators with greater endurance and prevalence in world-historical terms. Sex mortality differentials are presented as cross-cultural indicators of corporeal gender inequality, defined as differential access to basic bodily resources for life and health. Indeed, mortality differentials represent a more fundamental form of gender inequality, in that women first must be alive before they may be denied access to other resources such as equal pay. Analysis of United Nations and World Bank data on developed and developing countries evidence the importance of ecological, economic, and familial explanations in determining corporeal gender inequality. Women's familial roles are found to be more important for gender inequalities in death at younger ages, and women's economic roles are more important for death at older ages. Implications of the results for mortality decline and gender stratification theory are discussed.     

CONCENTRATED POVERTY, RACE, AND HOMICIDE

Research on the link between levels of poverty and homicide in urban areas has persistently reported the existence of a relationship for whites but not for blacks. This is despite the fact that most analysts expect that the higher levels of urban black homicide are due in part to the higher levels of urban black poverty. The present research introduces a more meaningful, spatially based measure of concentrated poverty and argues that the effect of concentrated poverty on homicide rates should be the same for both racial groups. The hypotheses are tested with race-disaggregated data for a sample of central cities circa 1990. The results suggest that, when poverty is measured as a linear spatially based phenomenon, in is a more important determinat of race-specific homicide rates than overall city levels of disadvantage and that the concentration of poverty increases both black and white homicide rather equally.     

THE EFFECTS OF OCCUPATIONAL GENDER SEGREGATION ACROSS RACE

The general relationship between occupational gender segregation and earnings inequality is well documented, although few studies have examined the relationship separately by race/ethnicity. This article investigates occupational gender segregation effects across whites, African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians. In addition, we explore two ways in which segregation may affect earnings: (1) by lowering the earnings of workers in female-dominated occupations and (2) by lowering the earnings of all workers in highly segregated labor markets. Our central findings are that both segregation effects contribute to earnings inequality and that the effects are observed quite broadly across racial/ethnic groups, although they particularly impact the earnings of African American women.     

Rethinking empirical approaches to racial segregation

Within empirical approaches to racial residential segregation, there has been a tendency to draw on the work of or influenced by Robert E. Park and his ecological hypothesis to explore social and spatial relations between members of different ethnic and racial groups, thus framing research within a race relations paradigm. This has promoted an analysis which naturalizes racial differences but which also sidelines structural considerations. In turn this approach has also fed into political discourses on segregation, at times supporting more reactionary positions. This paper seeks to address this debate by considering whether emphasis on minority ethnic concentration sidelines the more pertinent issue of concentration in deprived areas, suggesting that neighbourhood deprivation as a measure can be more easily aligned with structural conditions which have influenced the settlement and historical experience of many ethnic minority communities. Specifically, I consider the extent to which a measure of neighbourhood deprivation is more important than the ethnic composition of an area for thinking about the distribution of inequalities in unemployment (as one example of socio‐economic inequality). Using multilevel logistic regression I find neighbourhood income deprivation to be more important than levels of co‐ethnic concentration for explaining ethnic differences in unemployment. The findings imply that neighbourhood deprivation is significantly more important for considering inequalities in unemployment for ethnic minorities than the ethnic composition of an area.     

Does income inequality harm health? New cross-national evidence

The provocative hypothesis that income inequality harms population health has sparked a large body of research, some of which has reported strong associations between income inequality and population health. Cross-national evidence is frequently cited in support of this important hypothesis, but the hypothesis remains controversial, and the cross-national work has been criticized for several methodological shortcomings. This study replicates previous work using a larger sample (692 observations from 115 countries over the 1947-1996 period), a wider range of statistical controls, and fixed-effects models that address heterogeneity bias. The relationship between health and inequality shrinks when controls are included. In fixed-effects models that capture unmeasured heterogeneity, the association between income inequality and health disappears. The null findings hold for two measures of income inequality: the Gini coefficient and the share of income received by the poorest quintile of the population. Analysis of a sample of wealthy countries also fails to support the hypothesis.     

Racial Residential Segregation,Perceived Neighborhood Conditions,and Self-Rated Health: The Case of Houston,Texas

Previous research has linked racial residential segregation to a number of poor health outcomes. Yet, the mechanisms that could account for this association remain poorly understood and have seldom been empirically tested in the literature. In an analysis of the Houston area, we test one potential mechanism—perceived neighborhood conditions, as measured by two indices for neighborhood disorder and environmental quality. Using individual-level health data from a survey of Houston residents and neighborhood-level sociodemographic data from the U.S. Census, we estimate a series of multilevel models. We find that black and Latino segregation are linked to the perceived neighborhood disorder index, but no such relationship for the environmental quality index. Moreover, we find that both indices are related to poor self-rated health in that residents who evaluate their neighborhood conditions negatively are more likely to evaluate their health as poor. We also find a direct effect of black and Latino segregation on poor self-rated health, and that perceived neighborhood disorder partially mediates this relationship. We do not find a mediation effect for environmental quality. The results suggest that in order to improve the health of these communities, both residential segregation and neighborhood conditions need to be addressed.     

Segregation and Mortality: The Deadly Effects of Racism?

Elevated rates of mortality for African Americans compared to whites, coupled with the persistence of high levels of racial residential segregation, have directed attention to the structural manifestations of racism as potentially important pathogens for health. Using national mortality and census data for 1990 and a measure of black social isolation from whites, we examine the association between residential segregation and mortality in 107 major U.S. cities. Our analyses revealed that black social isolation tended to predict higher rates of mortality for African American males and females, although the strength of the association varied by cause of death. Socioeconomic deprivation explained a modest part of this association for black males but not for black females. Our analyses also found that a positive association between social isolation and mortality was more pronounced, for both blacks and whites, in cities that were also high on the index of dissimilarity. These findings highlight the need for research to identify the specific mechanisms and processes that link residential environments to adverse changes in health status.     

THE EFFECTS OF EXPORTS, PUBLIC DEBT, AND DEVELOPMENT ON INCOME INEQUALITY

Classical economics and most modernization theorists hold that a curvilinear relationship exist between income inequality and development level. In this article that relationship is tested. In addition, it is hypothesized that exports and debt as percentages of gross domestic product increases individual income inequality. Regression analyses with controls for development and time were used to test these relationships (N=28 at two time periods). To test these hypotheses with additional data a panel cross-section design was used with data for countries where it is not available a two separate times (N=37 and N=46). The results do not provide evidence to support a curvilinear relationship between development and income distribution when controls for dependency are included in the regression equation. The results from all six regressions presented support the hypothesis that exports enhance income inequality. Moreover, a covariant analysis indicates that exports effect inequality significantly more in undeveloped countries than in developed countries. It is concluded that for less developed countries pursuing export-oriented production, income does not become more evenly distributed at later stages of development.     

Racial Differences in Neighborhood Disadvantage Among Childbearing Women in New York City

Abstract

An ecological framework is utilized in this study to explore the differential neighborhood environments that existed for Black and White childbearing women in New York City during the early 1990s. We examined ecological risk factors for different racial groups in a highly segregated metropolitan city and provide a framework from which we can address issues of oppression and social inequality. This study examines neighborhood conditions and determines the extent to which Black and White women, who gave birth during 1991 and 1992, occupy differing neighborhoods in New York City and in each of the boroughs that comprise New York City-Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens (excluding Staten Island).

High and persistent residential segregation of Blacks and Whites in NYC has put Black women at a clear and significant ecological disadvantage compared to White women regardless of the borough where they lived when they gave birth to their infant. This study found that, when compared to White women, Black women in New York City are at a vast disadvantage regardless of income. In Manhattan and Queens that disparity is the greatest with low income Black women much more likely than low income White women to live in a high poverty neighborhood. Overall, in NYC and across the four boroughs studied, low income Blacks were more likely than Whites to live in neighborhoods characterized by high poverty rates, substance abuse and inadequate health care.     

Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Health: The Role of Lifestyle,Education, Income,and Wealth

Abstract

This article addresses the persistent relationship between race/ethnicity, SES, health-related lifestyle behaviors, and self-reported health using data from the 1995 National Health Interview Survey and its topical supplements. Through a series of models, we found that both SES (education, income, home ownership, and house and business monetary value) and health-related lifestyle behaviors (physical activity, nutrition awareness, and smoking) contribute to racial/ethnic disparities in self-reported health. Further, the impact of education on smoking behavior and self-reported health differs by race/ethnicity, with non-Hispanic whites receiving greater health benefits from education than African Americans and Hispanics. Although SES and lifestyle behaviors are indirect paths through which race/ethnicity affects health, the relationship between SES and health also is shaped by racial/ethnic status.     

Racial Segregation,the Concentration of Disadvantage,and Black and White Homicide Victimization

Discriminatory housing market practices have created and reinforced patterns of racial residential segregation throughout the United States. Such segregation has racist consequences too. Residential segregation increases the concentration of disadvantage for blacks but not whites, creating African-American residential environments that heighten social problems including violence within the black population. At the same time, segregation protects white residential environments from these dire consequences. This hypothesized racially inequitable process is tested for one important type of violence—homicide. We examine race-specific models of lethal violence that distinguish residential segregation from the concentration of disadvantage within racial groups. Data are from the Censuses of Population and Federal Bureau of Investigation's homicide incidence files for U.S. large central cities for 1980 and 1990. Our perspective finds support in the empirical analyses. Segregation has an important effect on black but not white killings, with the impact of segregation on African-American homicides explained by concentrated disadvantage.     

The effects of income inequality and income level on mortality vary by population size in Texas counties

OBJECTIVES: This study uses the counties of Texas to empirically test the predictions of Wilkinson's theory on the role of income and inequality in explaining health differentials in populations. Wilkinson predicts (1) that health is affected more by income inequality than average income in areas with large population, and (2) that health is affected more by average income than income inequality in areas with small population. We investigate how large the population of a unit must be for income inequality within the unit to affect mortality. METHODS: Measures of income inequality were computed from the 1990 U.S. census data and mortality was computed from Vital Statistics data. Poisson regressions estimated the age-adjusted relative risk of the top quintile relative to the bottom quintile for equality and for income among selections of Texas counties based on population size. County ethnic composition, educational level, and health care access were controlled for. RESULTS: Among counties with populations greater than 150,000, the risk of death was lower in counties with more equal income distribution than in counties with less equal income distribution. Among counties with population less than 150,000, median income affected relative risk in counties with less than 30 percent Hispanics, but not in those with more than 30 percent Hispanics. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides some support for the predictions of Wilkinson's theory.     

Race, ethnicity, and depression in Canadian society

This study examines racial/ethnic differences in mental health using data from the 1996-97 National Population Health Survey. Three hypotheses are tested. First, a socioeconomic hypothesis tests if differences in family income, education, and low income explain racial/ethnic mental health variation. Second, a social resources hypothesis tests if differences in social support explain racial/ethnic mental health variation. Finally, an interaction hypothesis tests if mental health variation stems from specific interactions of race/ethnicity with economic and social factors. Although there are socioeconomic, social resource, and interaction effects, the analysis shows that they do not fully explain racial/ethnic mental health variation. Overall, our results suggest that East and Southeast Asian, Chinese, South Asian, and black Canadians have better mental health than English Canadians. Jewish Canadians have poorer mental health than English Canadians. All other racial/ethnic groupings have similar mental health as English Canadians.