We employ data from the National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers and Clients to examine the character and correlates of hunger among homeless people. Our analysis, couched in an adaptation framework, finds more support for the differentiation hypothesis than for the leveling hypothesis: Complex patterns of food insecurity exist at the individual level, and they vary with the resources available (e.g., higher monthly income, regular shelter use) and obstacles faced (e.g., alcohol, drug, and physical and mental health problems). The chronically homeless, who suffer from multiple deficits, appear particularly food-insecure, a finding that favors the desperation hypothesis over its street-wisdom alternative. We conclude that hunger is not uniformly experienced by members of the homeless population. Rather, some individuals are better situated than others to cope with the stressful nature of homelessness when addressing their sustenance needs.

American suburbs are popularly perceived as demographically homogeneous compared with central cities. Social scientists have long challenged this perception; indeed, some cite recent evidence on suburban diversity to assert that the suburb—city distinction has become irrelevant. Here, several conceptual, methodological and theoretical improvements are introduced to improve the adjudication of claims about the extent and nature of suburban diversity. The analysis examines patterns and potential antecedents of population composition at both the suburban ring and place levels for 65 large US metropolitan areas. It is shown that rings and their constituent places are much more diverse than traditionally imagined. However, important differences still exist between suburbs and central cities on specific dimensions. It is also found that suburban diversity varies with metropolitan population size and suburban size, density, dominance and distance from the central city.

Our study investigates the diversification and fragmentation theses, fueled by claims that greater diversity is reshaping the social fabric of American life and that the United States is an increasingly fragmented nation. We take a multidimensional view of heterogeneity that considers whether growing ethnoracial diversity within U.S. communities (i.e., incorporated and unincorporated places) has resulted in the consolidation or differentiation of demographic, sociocultural, and economic distinctions between 1980 and 2010. As communities have become more ethnoracially diverse, they have become more heterogeneous in language and nativity—two characteristics tied closely to Latino and Asian population growth. However, ethnoracial diversity within communities is only weakly associated with household, age, educational, occupational, or income heterogeneity despite large racial/ethnic differences in these characteristics nationally. This trend does not apply to all forms of ethnoracial diversity equally: Hispanic and especially Asian population growth is more likely to generate community sociodemographic and economic heterogeneity than is black population growth. Consistent with the fragmentation hypothesis, we also find that broader geographic context matters, with more ethnoracially diverse metropolitan and micropolitan areas experiencing reduced social and economic heterogeneity inside their constituent places. We conclude by discussing the social implications of these patterns for intergroup relations, spatial exclusion, and ethnoracial inequality.

No abstract