Separate and Unequal: The Neighborhood Gap for Blacks and Hispanics in Metropolitan America

Book excerpt: This study used data from the Census of Population 1990 and 2000 to investigate economic inequalities between racial and ethnic groups, particularly blacks and Hispanics. It examined people's household incomes and the quality of their neighborhoods. Non-Hispanic Blacks remained the lowest-income minority group, with household incomes only 63.7 percent as high as those of non-Hispanic Whites. Blacks had higher percentage growth in income than whites, but their disadvantage increased by more than $400 in absolute terms. Hispanics and Asians declined relative to Whites in both percentage and absolute terms. While Hispanics' household income was lower than Whites', Asians had an income advantage. Blacks had the greatest neighborhood gap, declining slightly as a proportion but increasing by about $1,000 in real terms. Blacks lived in neighborhoods with median incomes only about 70 percent as high as whites. High black-white segregation in the northeast and midwest accentuated neighborhood inequalities in those regions compared to the south and west. While the neighborhood gap was smaller for Hispanics than Blacks, it grew over time. Asians had a neighborhood advantage over Whites. The neighborhood gap was almost as high for economically successful group members. Disparities between neighborhoods for Blacks and Hispanics with incomes above $60,000 were almost as large as the overall disparities. (Contains 12 tables.) (SM).