Change in metropolitan area residential integration, 1970–80

In contrast to the 1960s, the decade of the 1970s witnessed substantial progress in integrating residential neighborhoods in metropolitan areas. This progress was due to the redistribution of the black population toward middle- and high-income census tracts, areas more integrated than those left behind. Econometric analysis suggests that younger, higher income blacks played an important part in this redistribution; that residential integration was positively related to metropolitan area population size and black population income inequality; and that integration was negatively related to white prejudice, especially in strongly ethnic communities. Public sector discrimination, not strongly related to either a preceived threat from the black population or to fiscal considerations, seems to have slowed the pace of integration significantly.