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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social Forces. AbstractThis paper conceives of residential segregation as a multidimensional phenomenon varying along five distinct axes of measurement: evenness, exposure, concentration, centralization, and clustering. Twenty indices of segregation are surveyed and related conceptually to one of the five dimensions. Using data from a large set of U.S. metropolitan areas, the indices are intercorrelated and factor analyzed. Orthogonal and oblique rotations produce pattern matrices consistent with the postulated dimensional structure. Based on the factor analyses and other information, one index was chosen to represent each of the five dimensions, and these selections were confirmed with a principal components analysis. The paper recommends adopting these indices as standard indicators in future studies of segregation.After decades of lively debate on the nature of residential segregation and how to measure it, Duncan and Duncan (1955a) ushered in a long era of peace by demonstrating that there was little information in any of the prevailing indices not contained in the index of dissimilarity and the minority proportion, a conclusion subsequently reaffirmed by Taeuber and Taeuber (1965). For more than 20 years afterwards, the dissimilarity index served as the standard segregation measure, routinely employed to measure spatial segregation between social groups. This Pax Duncana came to an abrupt end in 1976, with the publication of a critique of the dissimilarity index by Cortese, Falk, and Cohen (1976). Ironically, this paper did not have a serious direct impact on the measurement of residential segregation. Practitioners did not take its criticisms too seriously

Residential segregation has traditionally been measured by using the index of dissimilarity and, more recently, the P* exposure index. These indices, however, measure only two of five potential dimensions of segregation and, by themselves, understate the degree of black segregation in U.S. society. Compared with Hispanics, not only are blacks more segregated on any single dimension of residential segregation, they are also likely to be segregated on all five dimensions simultaneously, which never occurs for Hispanics. Moreover, in a significant subset of large urban areas, blacks experience extreme segregation on all dimensions, a pattern we call hypersegregation. This finding is upheld and reinforced by a multivariate analysis. We conclude that blacks occupy a unique and distinctly disadvantaged position in the U.S. urban environment.

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