Household type, economic disadvantage, and residential segregation: empirical patterns and findings from simulation analysis

Abstract

In this thesis I focus on segregation between households giving attention to the roles that family type, economic inequality, and race can play in promoting and maintaining these patterns. I first consider three lines of urban ecological theory that have been offered to help explain patterns of segregation. One line of theory emphasizes the role of variation in preferences and needs. The second emphasizes urban structure, market dynamics, and economic inequality, while the third emphasizes the role of race. Research examining the role of consumer preferences in the neighborhood and housing choices of Americans has documented the salience of preferences regarding housing characteristics, neighborhood income, distance to employment, and neighborhood racial composition. Related research shows that these preferences vary with social characteristics such as socioeconomic status, ethnicity, gender, stage in the life cycle, and household type. I review these literatures and link them with urban ecological theory and the related literatures on social area analysis and factorial ecology. These theories argue that households within a city are likely to cluster together in space based on mutually shared characteristics and preferences. To explore these theories, I draw oncensus data for Houston, Texas and use the xPx measure to document patterns of contact between households based on family type, poverty status, and race. I also decompose the effects that each of these variables can have separately and in combination with each other. Following this analysis, I estimate a spatial attainment model that predicts characteristics of neighborhoods that individuals in each of the race, poverty and family type groups would live in. Finally, I use computer simulation methods to explore how micro-level dynamics of housing markets can produce patterns of segregation between groups who are similar in their location preferences. Specifically, I explore how the factors of area stratification and group income inequality can lead to segregation between groups who hold similar location preferences.