Racial Diversity and Residential Segregation: A Complex Relationship

This chapter aimed to determine the relationship between unban racial diversity and urban racial residential segregation in the United States. Residential location determines the availability and quality of economic and social resources including schools, safety, recreational amenities, and public transportation. Racial diversity was related to racial residential segregation and strongly related to racial isolation within the nation's metropolitan and micropolitan areas at the block group level. Metropolitan-level racial or ethnic residential segregation, a process that sorts individuals into different neighborhoods by race or ethnicity, has been implicated as a fundamental cause of health disparities. Two levels of units were used for the analysis. The first unit of analysis is the Metropolitan Area (MA) and Micropolitan Area (MI), as defined by the U.S. Bureau of the Census. MAs and MIs are defined as adjacent whole counties of which the core country contains an Urbanized Area of at least 50,000 people. However, the relationships were both complex and dependent on the racial group. Racial diversity was assessed for all 927 metropolitan and micropolitan areas instead of just the fifty or one hundred largest. Within each metro/micro area, racial segregation and isolation were evaluated at the block group level rather than the census tract level (with the exception of water and zero population block groups). The eight non-overlapping racial groups as defined by the U.S. Census were used. Racial diversity was measured with the Diversity Index (the Simpson Index). Racial residential segregation was measured with the pairwise Dissimilarity Index (D) and the Multigroup Dissimilarity Index (DG) as it was initially proposed using expected frequencies. Racial isolation was measured with the Isolation Index (P*). The Multigroup racial Dissimilarity Index was strongly related to racial diversity: the higher the metro/micro racial diversity, the higher the multigroup segregation. Racial isolation was also strongly related to racial diversity: The higher the metro/micro racial diversity, the greater the racial isolation.