A Downside of Increasing Human Capital: The Role of Higher Education in Poverty Segregation in U.S. Cities

Abstract

City administrations often work hard to attract or retain college-educated residents. Research has consistently demonstrated that increased education in a city is associated with beneficial outcomes, making cities’ efforts to recruit and retain college-educated individuals logical. However, we challenge the notion that rising rates of education is a universal positive by investigating a potential downside of such efforts: poverty segregation. In this article, we ask, how does an increase in higher education rates affect poverty segregation and are all cities at equal risk of this harmful consequence? Using fixed-effects analyses of U.S. cities from 1990 to 2010 to test this relationship, our results show that an increase of college-educated residents is associated with increased poverty segregation. Yet, not all cities are affected equally. Cities with predominantly Black residents and more civil rights organizations have lower or reversed associations between higher education and poverty concentration, especially when the college-educated population is increasingly Black. Recruiting college-educated individuals may help some, while further worsening existing structural inequalities.