The Residential Segregation of Hispanics in Metropolitan America: The Significance of White, Black, and Other

John Iceland, University of Maryland
Kyle Anne Nelson, University of Maryland

This paper investigates the role that race plays in shaping the residential patterns of Hispanics. Our goal is to gauge the extent to which various groups of Hispanics in metropolitan America share similar generational spatial trajectories. Such an examination can provide insight into the power, and perhaps limitations, of spatial assimilation theory. Our study is guided by the following specific questions: To what extent do residential patterns of Hispanics vary by race? Does nativity play a similar role for all race groups? Among which groups are spatial differences attenuating across generations? Do these patterns remain after taking country of origin, socioeconomic status, and metropolitan-area characteristics into consideration? To answer these questions, we draw on restricted-use 2000 census data to calculate the levels of residential segregation of Hispanics by race and nativity, and then analyze multivariate models to examine the strength of these relationships.