Migration, Mobility, and Neighborhood Attainment: Using the PSID to Understand the Processes of Racial Stratification

In this article we describe the considerable influence of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) on research on residential migration, mobility, and neighborhood attainment, as well as the role of PSID-based research in housing policy debates. We review some of the central research findings and key discoveries that have come from analyses that have used the PSID. We then present new research, using PSID data that are linked to geographic data, to demonstrate how geographic moves are associated with changes in neighborhood poverty rates. The relationship differs markedly for blacks and whites, and our results add to a body of work that shows sharp racial differences in residential context, and the role that personal migration plays in shaping this stratification. Finally, we use these findings and the shortcomings of past research to prescribe ways that the PSID could be enhanced to understand more about migration dynamics and processes of residential stratification.

Muslim/Non-Muslim Locational Attainment in Philadelphia: A New Fault Line in Residential Inequality?

This study examines Muslim/non-Muslim disparities in locational attainment. We pooled data from the 2004, 2006, and 2008 waves of the Public Health Management Corporation’s Southeastern Pennsylvania Household Survey. These data contain respondents’ religious identities and are geocoded at the census-tract level, allowing us to merge American Community Survey data and examine neighborhood-level outcomes to gauge respondents’ locational attainment. Net of controls, our multivariate analyses reveal that among blacks and nonblacks, Muslims live in neighborhoods that have significantly lower shares of whites and greater representations of blacks. Among blacks, Muslims are significantly less likely to reside in suburbs, relative to non-Muslims. The Muslim disadvantages for blacks and nonblacks in neighborhood poverty and neighborhood median income, however, become insignificant. Our results provide support for the tenets of the spatial assimilation and place stratification models and suggest that Muslim/non-Muslim disparities in locational attainment comprise a new fault line in residential stratification.

THE DIVERSITY OF INTEGRATION IN A MULTIETHNIC METROPOLIS

Although there is little debate that Census data reveal declines in standard measures of segregation over the past several decades, depending on who you ask, racial residential segregation is either just about gone or is stubbornly persistent. In this study, we draw attention to how the murkiness in the conceptualization of what has replaced ‘segregation’ and the related question of what integration is, contributes to this disagreement. Through an analysis of attitudes toward racially integrated neighborhoods, we demonstrate the pitfalls of our lack of consistency and clarity about the conceptual and operational definition of integration. Our analysis reveals the diversity of attitudes toward integrated communities—depending on who is asked, and what kind of integration is considered—and points to a fragility of commitment to the ideals of integration. We do this by using an innovative survey dataset that includes both open and closed-ended questions asked of a large probability sample of Whites, African Americans, and Latinos living in the Chicago metropolitan area. The survey asked individuals to describe their ideal neighborhood racial/ethnic composition and explain why it was ideal; they were then asked to describe (and explain) their least desired neighborhood racial/ethnic composition. Juxtaposing the results, we reveal that integration is both enthusiastically endorsed and much maligned—even within the same person—and that whether it is good or bad very much depends on the type of integration. We argue that appreciating the diversity of integration attitudes is critical if we are to develop a more nuanced understanding of future patterns of residential stratification in our increasingly diverse nation.