Neighborhood Racial Status and White Out-Mobility
March 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-19
Abstract
Drawing on American Community Survey data, this study examines how whites' relative socioeconomic standing vis-'-vis nonwhite neighbors affects the association between minority presence and white out-mobility. Moving beyond the racial preferences versus racial proxy debate, we integrate group competition and contact theories with status theory to conceptualize 'racial status' as whites' first-order income rank relative to the subgroup status of Black, Hispanic, and Asian residents at the census tract level. Multilevel linear probability models show that whites lacking advantaged status are generally more likely to move. However, the positive association between Black or Asian concentration and white departure is weaker among status-disadvantaged whites, while the negative association with Hispanic concentration is stronger. These patterns lend greater support to contact theory than to group competition theory. By foregrounding relative status, the study demonstrates that racial and socioeconomic mechanisms are intertwined in shaping white residential mobility.
Document Tags and Keywords
Keywords
Keywords are automatically generated using KeyBERT, a powerful and innovative
keyword extraction tool that utilizes BERT embeddings to ensure high-quality and contextually relevant
keywords.
By analyzing the content of working papers, KeyBERT identifies terms and phrases that capture the essence of the
text, highlighting the most significant topics and trends. This approach not only enhances searchability but
provides connections that go beyond potentially domain-specific author-defined keywords.
:
black,
minority,
ethnicity,
ethnic,
hispanic,
immigrant,
white,
segregation,
disadvantaged,
racial,
interracial,
race,
residential,
neighborhood,
mobility,
resident,
residence,
neighbor,
residential segregation
Tags
Tags are automatically generated using a pretrained language model from spaCy, which excels at
several tasks, including entity tagging.
The model is able to label words and phrases by part-of-speech,
including "organizations." By filtering for frequent words and phrases labeled as "organizations", papers are
identified to contain references to specific institutions, datasets, and other organizations.
:
National Science Foundation,
Research Data Center,
American Community Survey,
Alfred P Sloan Foundation,
Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics,
Special Sworn Status,
Census Bureau Disclosure Review Board,
2010 Census,
Disclosure Review Board,
Hypothesis 2
Similar Working Papers
Similarity between working papers are determined by an unsupervised neural
network model
know as Doc2Vec.
Doc2Vec is a model that represents entire documents as fixed-length vectors, allowing for the
capture of semantic meaning in a way that relates to the context of words within the document. The model learns to
associate a unique vector with each document while simultaneously learning word vectors, enabling tasks such as
document classification, clustering, and similarity detection by preserving the order and structure of words. The
document vectors are compared using cosine similarity/distance to determine the most similar working papers.
Papers identified with 🔥 are in the top 20% of similarity.
The 10 most similar working papers to the working paper 'Neighborhood Racial Status and White Out-Mobility' are listed below in order of similarity.
-
Working PaperStatus Inconsistency and Geographic Mobility in the United States🔥
March 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-20
This study examines how neighborhood status and individual status jointly shape geographic mobility in the United States. Drawing on restricted-use American Community Survey data, we conceptualize neighborhood status as the relative standing of a census tract's median family income compared to demographically similar reference neighborhoods, and individual status as a household's relative income rank within its tract. Building on comparison theory and status inconsistency perspectives, we test whether mismatches between neighborhood and individual status influence short-distance (within-county) and long-distance (between-county) mobility. Multinomial logistic models reveal that disadvantaged neighborhood status increases within-county mobility, particularly when paired with high individual status, supporting spatial assimilation arguments. Conversely, low individual status in high-status neighborhoods heightens mobility, consistent with relative deprivation theory rather than status signaling. Results suggest that status inconsistency plays a central role in residential decision-making and that neighborhood status primarily affects short-distance mobility. The findings advance research on stratification and internal migration by integrating relative contextual and positional mechanisms.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperWhose Neighborhood Now? Gentrification and Community Life in Low-Income Urban Neighborhoods
June 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-29
Gentrification is a process of urban change that has wide-ranging social and political impacts, but previous studies provide divergent findings. Does gentrification leave residents feeling alienated, or does it bolster neighborhood social satisfaction? Politically, does urban change mobilize residents, or leave them disengaged? I assess a national, cross-sectional sample of about 17,500 respondents in lower-income urban neighborhoods, and use a structural equation modeling approach to model six latent variables pertaining to local social environment and political participation. Amongst the full sample, gentrification has a positive association with all six factors. However, this relationship depends upon respondents' level of income, length of residency, and racial identity. White residents and those with shorter length of residency report higher levels of social cohesion as gentrification increases, but there is no such association amongst racial minority groups and longer-term residents. This finding aligns with a perspective on gentrification as a racialized process, and demonstrates that gentrification-related amenities primarily serve the interests of white residents and newcomers. All groups, however, are more likely to participate in neighborhood politics as gentrification increases, drawing attention to the agency of local residents as they attempt to influence processes of urban change.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperHow Does Geography Matter in Ethnic Labor Market Segmentation Process? A Case Study of Chinese Immigrants in the San Francisco CMSA
March 2007
Working Paper Number:
CES-07-09
In the context of continuing influxes of large numbers of immigrants to the United States, urban labor market segmentation along the lines of race/ethnicity, gender, and class has drawn considerable growing attention. Using a confidential dataset extracted from the United States Decennial Long Form Data 2000 and a multilevel regression modeling strategy, this paper presents a case study of Chinese immigrants in the San Francisco metropolitan area. Correspondent with the highly segregated nature of the labor market as between Chinese immigrant men and women, different socioeconomic characteristics at the census tract level are significantly related to their occupational segregation. This suggests the social process of labor market segmentation is contingent on the immigrant geography of residence and workplace. With different direction and magnitude of the spatial contingency between men and women in the labor market, residency in Chinese immigrant concentrated areas is perpetuating the gender occupational segregation by skill level. Whereas abundant ethnic resources may exist in ethnic neighborhoods and enclaves for certain types of employment opportunities, these resources do not necessarily help Chinese immigrant workers, especially women, to move upward along the labor market hierarchy.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperWho Gentrifies Low Income Neighborhoods?
January 2008
Working Paper Number:
CES-08-02
This paper uses confidential Census data, specifically the 1990 and 2000 Census Long- Form data, to study the demographic processes underlying the gentrification of low income urban neighborhoods during the 1990's. In contrast to previous studies, the analysis is conducted at the more refined census-tract level with a narrower definition of gentrification and more narrowly defined comparison neighborhoods. The analysis is also richly disaggregated by demographic characteristic, uncovering differential patterns by race, education, age and family structure that would not have emerged in the more aggregate analysis in previous studies. The results provide little evidence of displacement of low-income non-white households in gentrifying neighborhoods. The bulk of the income gains in gentrifying neighborhoods are attributed to white college graduates and black high school graduates. It is the disproportionate in-migration of the former and the disproportionate retention and income gains of the latter that appear to be the main engines of gentrification.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperNeighborhood Effects on High-School Drop-Out Rates and Teenage Childbearing: Tests for Non-Linearities, Race-Specific Effects, Interactions with Family Characteristics, and Endogenous Causation using Geocoded California Census Microdata
May 2008
Working Paper Number:
CES-08-12
This paper examines the relationship between neighborhood characteristics and the likelihood that a youth will drop out of high school or have a child during the teenage years. Using a dataset that is uniquely wellsuited to the study of neighborhood effects, the impact of the neighborhood poverty rate and the percentage of professionals in the local labor force on youth outcomes in California is examined. The first section of the paper tests for non-linearities in the relationship between indicators of neighborhood distress and youth outcomes. Some evidence is found for a break-point at low levels of poverty. Suggestive but inconclusive evidence is also found for a second breakpoint, at very high levels of poverty, for African-American youth only. The second part of the paper examines interactions between family background characteristics and neighborhood effects, and finds that White youth are most sensitive to neighborhood effects, while the effect of parental education depends on the neighborhood measure in question. Among White youth, those from single-parent households are more vulnerable to neighborhood conditions. The third section of the paper finds that for White youth and Hispanic youth, the relevant neighborhood variables appear to be the own-race poverty rates and the percentage of professionals of youths' own race. The final section of the paper estimates a tract-fixed effects model, using the results from the third section to define multiple relevant poverty rates within each tract. The fixed-effects specification suggests that for White and Hispanic youth in California, neighborhood effects remain significant, even with the inclusion of controls for any unobserved family and neighborhood characteristics that are constant within tracts.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperWHITE-LATINO RESIDENTIAL ATTAINMENTS AND SEGREGATION IN SIX CITIES: ASSESSING THE ROLE OF MICRO-LEVEL FACTORS
January 2016
Working Paper Number:
CES-16-51
This study examines the residential outcomes of Latinos in major metropolitan areas using new methods to connect micro-level analyses of residential attainments to overall patterns of segregation in the metropolitan area. Drawing on new formulations of standard measures of evenness, we conduct micro-level multivariate analyses using the restricted-use census microdata files to predict segregation-relevant neighborhood outcomes for individuals by race. We term the dependent variables segregation-relevant neighborhood outcomes because the differences in average outcomes for each group on these variables determine the values of the aggregate measures of evenness. This approach allows me to use standardization and components analysis to quantitatively assess the separate contributions that differences in social characteristics and differences in rates of return make towards determining the overall disparity in residential outcomes ' that is, the level of segregation ' between Whites and Latinos. Based on our micro-level residential attainment analyses we find that for Latinos, acculturation and gains in socioeconomic status are associated with greater residential contact with Whites, in agreement with spatial assimilation theory, which promotes lower segregation. However, our standardization and components analyses reveals that a substantial portion of White-Latino disparities in residential contact with Whites can be attributed to differences in rates of return; that is White-Latino differences in the ability to translate acculturation and gains in socioeconomic status into more residential contact with Whites. This is further elaborated upon by assessing the changes in contact with Whites for Whites and Latinos after manipulating single variables while holding all others constant. This can be interpreted as the role of discrimination which is emphasized by place stratification theory. Therefore we conclude that while members of minority groups make gains in residential outcomes that reduce segregation by attaining parity with Whites on social characteristics as spatial assimilation theory would predict, a substantial disparity will persist as Latinos cannot translate those gains into greater contact with Whites at the rate that Whites can. At the aggregate level of analysis, this means that White-Latino segregation remains substantial even when groups are equalized on social and economic characteristics.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperIs the Melting Pot Still Hot? Explaining the Resurgence of Immigrant Segregation
August 2004
Working Paper Number:
CES-04-10
This paper uses decennial Census data to examine trends in immigrant segregation in the United States between 1910 and 2000. Immigrant segregation declined in the first half of the century, but has been rising steadily over the past three decades. Analysis of restricted access 1990 Census microdata suggests that this rise would be even more striking if the native-born children of immigrants could be consistently excluded from the analysis. We analyze panel and cross-sectional variation in immigrant segregation, as well as housing price patterns across metropolitan areas, to test four hypotheses of immigrant segregation. Immigration itself has surged in recent decades, but the tendency for newly arrived immigrants to be younger and of lower socioeconomic status explains very little of the recent rise in immigrant segregation. We also find no evidence of increased nativism in the housing market. Evidence instead points to changes in urban form, particularly the tendency for ethnic enclaves to form as suburbanizing households leave older neighborhoods, as a central explanation for the new immigrant segregation.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperAssociations Between Public Housing and Individual Earnings in New Orleans
October 2015
Working Paper Number:
CES-15-32
This study uses a sample of the civilian labor force aged 16-64 constructed from the Decennial Census and American Community Survey, along with data from the HUD dataset Picture of Subsidized Households, to compare the likelihood for job earnings in relation to public housing developments in the New Orleans MSA before and after Hurricane Katrina. Results from a series of hierarchical linear models (HLM) indicate significant relationships are altered between time periods, including those from public and mixed-income developments, suggesting a fluid relationship between neighborhoods and economic outcomes during physical, demographic and economic restructuring.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperBlack Pioneers, Intermetropolitan Movers, and Housing Desegregation
March 2016
Working Paper Number:
CES-16-23
In this project, we examine the mobility choices of black households between 1960 and 2000. We use household-level Decennial Census data geocoded down to the census tract level. Our results indicate that, for black households, one's status as an intermetropolitan migrant ' especially from an urban area outside the South ' is a powerful predictor of pioneering into a white neighborhood. Moreover, and perhaps even more importantly, the ratio of these intermetropolitan black arrivals to the incumbent metropolitan black population is a powerful predictor of whether a metropolitan area experiences substantial declines in housing segregation.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperMetropolitan Segregation: No Breakthrough in Sight
May 2022
Working Paper Number:
CES-22-14
The 2020 Census offers new information on changes in residential segregation in metropolitan regions across the country as they continue to become more diverse. We take a long view, assessing trends since 1980 and extrapolating to the future. These new data mostly reinforce patterns that were observed a decade ago: high but slowly declining black-white segregation, and less intense but hardly changing segregation of Hispanics and Asians from whites. Enough time has passed since the civil rights era of the 1960s and 1970s to draw this conclusion: segregation will continue to divide Americans well into the 21st Century.View Full Paper PDF
