Black-White Segregation in Multiethnic Metropolis: How Does Multigroup Context Alter the Effect of Black-White Segregation for Blacks?

Lingxin Hao, Johns Hopkins University
Amy Lutz, Syracuse University

How do the residential dynamics change the nature and impact of racial residential segregation when the American residential landscape becomes increasingly diverse? Although the multigroup segregation method has been developed, its utility in substantive interpretation and hypothesis testing are underdeveloped. This paper first explores the interpretive meaning of multigroup measures of segregation, constructed using the 2000 census. The decomposed components of the multigroup segregation are compared with traditional pairwise measures. By examining three types of cities, we bring life to the abstract measures. We then examine the impact of black-white residential segregation on the income of blacks while controlling for measures of diversity and multigroup segregation of individuals' resident metropolitan areas. We test the hypothesis that the detrimental effect of black-white segregation on African Americans' income becomes weaker as the local population becomes more diverse using the quantile regression technique and the 5% PUMS 2000 data.