08/12/2021. Metropolitan Segregation: No Breakthrough in Sight
John R. Logan (Brown University) and Brian J. Stults (Florida State University)

The 2020 Census offers new information on changes in residential segregation in metropolitan regions across the country as they continue to become more diverse. We take a long view, assessing trends since 1980 and extrapolating to the future. These new data mostly reinforce patterns that were observed a decade ago: high but slowly declining black-white segregation, and less intense but hardly changing segregation of Hispanics and Asians from whites. Enough time has passed since the civil rights era of the 1960s and 1970s to draw this conclusion: segregation will continue to divide Americans well into the 21st Century.

12/3/2014. Separate and Unequal in Suburbia
John R. Logan (Brown University)

Suburbs in 2010 had become as racially and ethnically diverse as central cities were in 1980. This increasing diversity is accompanied by persistent segregation, concentrating blacks and Hispanics in poorer neighborhoods than comparable whites or Asians and placing their children in worse performing schools.

11/06/2013: Diversity in Old Age: The Elderly in Changing Economic and Family Contexts
Judith A. Seltzer( Department of Sociology and California Center for Population Research, UCLA), Jenjira J. Yahirun( Population Research Center, University of Texas, Austin and California Center for Population Research, UCLA)

The longevity of today's older adults offers greater opportunities for meaningful interactions with children and grandchildren. Yet, the strength of these ties has been tested by changes in the structure and composition of families caused by high rates of cohabitation, childbearing outside of marriage, and divorce. And the rates of disruption are higher for poorer families, so older parents with the fewest resources to share are most likely to be called on for help.

10/16/2013: Residential Segregation by Income, 1970-2009
Kendra Bischoff (Cornell University ), Sean F. Reardon (Stanford University)

In 2009, only 42% of families lived in middle-income neighborhoods, compared to 65% four decades earlier. A growing proportion of society's resources are concentrated in a smaller proportion of very affluent neighborhoods. Most of the increase in income segregation – and especially the increase in segregation of wealthy families – is attributable to increasing income inequality.

10/09/2013: Cohort Trends in Housing and Household Formation Since 1990
Emily Rosenbaum ( Fordham University )

Studies of the housing crisis show that households headed by young adults face the greatest obstacles in buying a home. This report finds that what really distinguishes the young adult generation is that they are having difficulty even establishing their own households, whether renting or owning. This has been a problem since the first baby boom cohort entered adulthood, and the economic crises of the last decade have aggravated it for the most recent cohort.

10/02/2013: Is Ethnoracial Residential Integration on the Rise?Evidence from Metropolitan and Micropolitan America Since 1980
Barrett A. Lee and John Iceland ( The Pennsylvania State University ), Chad R. Farrell(University of Alaska-Anchorage)

A strong trend toward greater diversity has been underway across metro and micro areas since 1980, fueled by Hispanic and Asian growth. During the same period, a large majority of the areas exhibit declines in the segregation of their black and white populations. And the number of mixed neighborhoods (in which no racial-ethnic group constitutes a majority of residents) has more than quadrupled in metro settings, from roughly 1,500 in 1980 to 6,300 in 2010.

09/22/2013: Residential Mobility in the U.S. and the Great Recession: A Shift to Local Moves
Michael A. Stoll ( Luskin School of Public Affairs, UCLA )

The Great Recession has accentuated a longer term decline in long distance migration and pushed up the volume of local moves. Movers are increasingly pressed by problems of affordability and job loss, and "moving up" is becoming less common.

09/11/2013: Divergent Paths of American Families
Zhenchao Qian ( Department of Sociology, The Ohio State University )

After a period of relative calm during the 1990s, rapid changes in American families began anew during the 2000s. Young people delayed marriage longer than ever before, permanent singlehood increased, and divorce and remarriage continued to rise during the first decade of the century. A troubling finding is how American families have taken divergent paths: White people, the educated and the economically secure have much more stable family situations than minorities, the uneducated and the poor.

09/04/2013: High Skilled Immigrants
John Bound ( University of Michigan) and Sarah Turner( University of Virginia )

High-skill immigration has allowed the U.S. labor market to respond to changes in demand for workers in science and engineering resulting from shocks like changes in defense spending, the doubling of the NIH budget and the IT and internet boom. This flow is facilitated by the growth of post-secondary education in major sending countries, but constrained by U.S. immigration policy.

08/26/2013: The Middle Class: Losing Ground, Losing Wealth
Edward N. Wolff( New York University)

A middle class already deeply indebted has been severely hurt by the recession, especially because such a large share of their wealth was in the form of home ownership. People at the top of the wealth pyramid have been more able to rebound.

08/26/2013: Median Income and Income Inequality: From 2000 and Beyond
Richard V. Burkhauser( Cornell University, University of Melbourne)and Jeff Larrimore (Joint Committee on Taxation)

Income inequality increased sharply during the Great Recession, and the prospects for income growth are reduced by the replacement of whites in their prime earning ages by younger minorities in the next decade.

07/17/2013: Gender Disparities in Educational Attainment in the New Century: Trends, Causes and Consequences
Thomas A. DiPrete ( Columbia University )and Claudia Buchmann (Ohio State University)

Women are more likely than men to complete college for every major racial/ethnic group in the U.S. In 2010 57% of college students were women. This study evaluates the reasons for this pattern and compares it to patterns in other industrial countries.

06/26/2013: Separate but Equal: Asian Nationalities in the U.S.
John R. Logan and Weiwei Zhang (Department of Sociology, Brown University)

Some Asian nationality groups are as segregated as Hispanics, but they tend to be segregated into neighborhoods that are even better on average than the areas where non-Hispanic whites live. The ethnic neighborhood chocie is a realistic alternative to assimilation for many Asian Americans.

05/29/2013: Unauthorized Mexican Migration and the Socioeconomic Integration of Mexican Americans
Frank D. Bean (University of California, Irvine), James D. Bachmeier (Pennsylvania State University), Susan K. Brown (University of California, Irvine), Jennifer Van Hook (Pennsylvania State University), Mark A. Leach (Pennsylvania State University)

This study analyzes the sources of unauthorized Mexican immigration to the United States, the disadvantages faced by unauthorized immigrants in the labor market, and especially the long term impact on educational achievement by their US-born children and grandchildren Children of legal Mexican immigrants averaged two more years of schooling compared to children of illegal immigrants, the equivalent of the difference between having some college and not finishing high school. Clear pathways to legalization can boost Mexican American educational attainment even as late as the third generation.

05/08/2013: The Asset Price Meltdown and the Wealth of the Middle Class
Edward N. Wolff, Department of Economics, New York University

The collapse of the stock market and home prices has taken an immense toll on the assets of the middle class. The wealth of the average (median) American household in 2010 was at its lowest level since 1969 in constant dollars. Minorities and young adults were especially impacted by the sharp rise in wealth inequality after 2000.

03/20/2013: The Diversity of Hispanic Populations in the United States
John R. Logan, Richard N. Turner, Brown University

The residential separation of most Hispanic groups has sharply declined in the last two decades, despite their continued growth. Hispanics come to the U.S. from many origins, and there are real differences between them. South Americans have the highest education and are the least separated from whites among all Hispanic groups. Dominicans, Central Americans and South Americans are the fastest growing Hispanic groups.

02/20/2013: Great Recession Spurs a Shift to Local Moves
Michael A. Stoll, Department of Public Policy and Luskin School of Public Affairs,UCLA

In the Great Recession long range moves have declined but there has been a jump in moving locally. In 2010, 9% of Americans moved locally, the highest level in a decade. Meanwhile, less than 2% of Americans moved farther afield, the lowest level in this same period. People moved the most in metropolitan areas with the highest unemployment and the highest foreclosures, areas hard hit by the Great Recession. Unlike the past decades, when local movers were moving up economically these movers were moving down economically.

09/07/2012: Racial and Ethnic Diversity Goes Local: Charting Change in American Communities Over Three Decades
Barrett A. Lee, John Iceland, and Gregory Sharp, Department of Sociology and Population Research Institute, The Pennsylvania State University

Increasing diversity has long been apparent at the national level and in our nation's largest metropolitan gateways. Since 1980 over nine-tenths of all cities, suburbs, and small towns have become more diverse. And rural communities are following the lead of their urban counterparts. Places where whites make up 90% or more of the population were two-thirds of the total three decades ago; now they are down to only one-third.

8/1/2012: During the Great Recession, More Young Adults Lived with Parents
Zhenchao Qian (The Ohio State University)

Leaving home marks the transition from dependence to autonomy, but the Great Recession has led to economic and personal instability for America’s 20-to-34-year-olds.

3/21/2012: Home Ownership's Wild Ride, 2001-2011
Emily Rosenbaum (Fordham University)

Not everyone benefited from the the housing boom 10 years ago, leading to steep declines when the Great Recession hit.

03/08/2012: A Very Uneven Road: U.S. Labor Markets in the Past 30 Years
Harry J. Holzer (Georgetown University, American Institutes for Research) and Marek Hlavac (Harvard University)

Of the four U.S. recessions that occurred since 1979, two were quite mild while the other two were quite severe – especially the Great Recession of 2008 and beyond. Very large increases in unemployment rates and durations have occurred in the recent downturn, and were experienced primarily by less-educated, younger and/or minority workers – who had already experienced relative declines in their earnings and employment over the past three decades.

11/16/2011: More Unequal and More Separate: Growth in the Residential Segregation of Families by Income, 1970-2009
Sean F. Reardon and Kendra Bischoff, Stanford University

The share of families who live in the poorest and most affluent neighborhoods of the nation's 117 largest metro areas has more than doubled since 1970. Over the same period, the percent of families living in middle-income neighborhoods dropped from 65 percent to 44 percent.

10/31/2011, Global Neighborhoods: New Evidence from Census 2010
John R. Logan, Brown University and Wenquan Zhang, Texas A&M

In the nation's 20 most multiethnic metropolitan areas, nearly 40 percent of the population now lives in global neighborhoods: up dramatically from less than 25 percent in 1980. But this progress is counterweighted: About half the black residents and 40 percent of Hispanics in these metros still live in all-minority neighborhoods.

10/18/2011: Unauthorized Immigrant Parents:Do Their Migration Histories Limit Their Children’s Education?
Mark A. Leach (Pennsylvania State University), Frank D. Bean (University of California, Irvine), Susan K. Brown (University of California, Irvine) and Jennifer Van Hook (Pennsylvania State University)

High school and college are less attainable for 3.8 million Mexican-American children who have unauthorized parent/parents. Whether the parents entered the U.S. illegally matters far less than whether they remained unauthorized.

08/02/2011: Separate and Unequal: The Neighborhood Gap for Blacks, Hispanics and Asians in Metropolitan America
John Logan (Brown University)

The average black or Hispanic household earning more than $75,000 lives in a poorer neighborhood than the average white resident earning less than $40,000.

07/25/2011: Whose Schools Are Failing?
John Logan (Brown University)

No Child Left Behind can't fix the performance disparities between schools attended by whites and Asians and those attended by blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans.

04/26/2011: An Uneven Road, Then a Cliff: U.S. Labor Markets, 2000-10
Harry J. Holzer and Marek Hlavac (Georgetown Public Policy Institute, Georgetown University)

Following the boom period of 1995-2000, most American workers either treaded water or lost ground on earnings from 2000 to 2007: many with disastrous consequences.

4/12/2011: How Changes in Employment, Earnings and Public Transfers Make the First Two Years of the Great Recession (2007-2009) Different from Previous Recessions and Why It Matters
Richard V. Burkhauser (Cornell University) and Jeff Larrimore (Joint Committee on Taxation

Two factors distinguish the median-income declines and inequality increases in the first two years of the Great Recession from earlier recessions: employment decline, not earnings decline, for women and especially men; and the offset of increased public transfers.

3/24/2011: The Persistence of Segregation in the Metropolis: New Findings from the 2010 Census
John R. Logan (Brown University) and Brian J. Stults (Florida State University)

Since 1980, black-white segregation has continued to reduce slowly, slowly, but the traditional Ghetto Belt cities of the Northeast and Midwest remain extraordinarily segregated. The growth of the Hispanic and Asian populations is creating larger, denser ethnic enclaves around the U.S.

 

© Spatial Structures in the Social Sciences, Brown University