FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2002
Public Information Office CB02-CN.174
(301) 763-3691/457-3620 (fax)
(301) 457-1037 (TDD)
e-mail: 2000usa@census.gov
Residential Segregation of African-Americans Declines;
Signals Mixed for Other Groups, Analysis Shows
African-Americans experienced modest but consistent declines in
residential segregation from 1980 to 2000, according to a two-year
analysis of census data by the U.S. Census Bureau. The study found that
segregation patterns were mixed for Hispanics, Asians and Pacific
Islanders, and American Indians and Alaska Natives. Despite the declines,
African-Americans remained the most highly segregated group.
"This is one of the most exhaustive studies of residential segregation
ever undertaken," said Daniel H. Weinberg, co-author with John Iceland of
the report, Racial and Ethnic Residential Segregation in the United States:
1980-2000 [PDF 19M]. The authors said that residential segregation may
result from a variety of factors, including choices people make about
where they want to live, restrictions on their choices or lack of
information. The report, however, limits its focus to the measurable
extent of segregation according to five objective indices dissimilarity
(evenness), isolation (exposure), delta (concentration), absolute
centralization and spatial proximity (clustering).
The dissimilarity index, the most widely-used, measures the percentage
of a group's population that would have to change residence for each
neighborhood to have the same percentage of that group as the metropolitan
area overall. African Americans, the largest minority group in 1980 and
1990, showed a significant decline in dissimilarity.
The one index where only African Americans experienced declines, the
study said, was in isolation or exposure, i.e., the degree of potential
contact between minority and majority group members. This measure
increased for Asians and Hispanics mainly because of major increases in
their populations due to immigration since 1980.
Declines in segregation were most evident in absolute centralization,
the degree to which a group is located near the population center of an
urban area. All groups showed declines in this measure over the 1980 to
2000 period.
The study focused on metropolitan areas, using constant June 30, 1999,
boundaries, but also examined selected metropolitan areas, where the
minority group consists of at least 20,000 people or 3 percent of the
total 1980 population. The unit of analysis was the census tract, which
typically encompasses between 2,500 and 8,000 people and is intended to
represent a neighborhood.
The report, based on data from the 1980, 1990 and 2000 decennial
censuses, includes representations of residential segregation in the form
of graphs and maps.
Because the base data are from the decennial census, they have no
sampling error and conventional tests of significance do not apply.
However, the data are subject to nonsampling error.
(Note to editors: The values and ranks reported for metropolitan
statistical areas on the several indices could be misinterpreted as
indicating that residential segregation is a more serious problem in some
metropolitan areas and a less serious problem in others. The reported
measures cannot sustain such inferences or interpretations.)
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