Abstract
Researchers measuring racial inequality of neighborhood environment across metropolitan areas have traditionally used segregation measures; yet such measures are limited for incorporating a third axis of information, including neighborhood opportunity. Using Census 2000 tract-level data for the largest U.S. metropolitan areas, the authors introduce the interquartile-range overlap statistic to summarize the substantial separation of entire distributions of neighborhood environments between racial groups. They find that neighborhood poverty distributions for minorities overlap only 27%, compared to the distributions for Whites. Furthermore, the separation of racial groups into neighborhoods of differing poverty rates is strongly correlated with racial residential segregation. The overlap statistic provides a straightforward, policy-relevant metric for monitoring progress toward achieving more equal environments of neighborhood opportunity space.
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