Separate and Unequal: The Impact of Socioeconomic Status, Segregation, and the Great Recession on Racial Disparities in Housing Values

Abstract

The effects of race, class, and residential segregation on housing values continue to be a major focus of sociological research. Nevertheless, there has yet to be a study that places these factors in the context of the great recession of 2008 and 2009. Accordingly, the purpose of this work is to assess the extent to which the great recession affected housing values for African Americans and whites relative to the joint effects of race, class, and residential segregation. The following research questions are addressed: (1) How do segregation and socioeconomic status (SES) affect racial differences in housing values? (2) What were the levels of racial disparity in housing values before, during, and after the great recession? and (3) Were the housing values of higher status African Americans insulated from the negative impact of segregation and the great recession compared with their lower status counterparts? Using the Integrated Public Use Micro-data Series, the 2010 metropolitan area dissimilarity and population density scores, and hierarchical linear modeling, the findings revealed that the great recession exacerbated racial differences in housing values most in the higher SES categories. Higher status African Americans were more disadvantaged relative to comparable whites than lower status African Americans compared with similar whites in terms of housing values. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings.

Comparing Residential Segregation of Migrant Populations in Selected European Urban and Metropolitan Areas

“…In general, residential segregation of a minority group, whether it be an ethnic group or any subgroup of the population defined socially or religiously or in other ways denotes a spatial distribution that is different from the one of the rest of the population. Although not all scholars agree on the idea that higher levels of residential segregation correspond to lower levels of integration (Portes and Zhou 1993;Musterd 2003;Bolt et al 2010), the belief that a minority groups' residential segregation determines-at least at the macro level-a set of negative effects on the societies seems widely shared (Williams and Collins 2001;Kawachi 2002;Walton 2009;Thomas et al 2018).…”

Neighborhood Racial Composition and Gun Homicides

“…The US remains highly residentially segregated by race despite improvements since the 1960s. 5 Besides residential segregation reducing Black individuals’ socioeconomic status by such mechanisms as inhibiting wealth accumulation through housing value and limiting access to high-quality schools, 6 our findings suggest that even among neighborhoods of the same socioeconomic status, residential segregation may put Black individuals at higher risk of gun homicide. Potential explanations include the following being more prevalent in higher proportion Black neighborhoods: lack of institutional resources and opportunities caused by racial wealth gaps and underinvestment, the legacy of punitive law enforcement leading to difficulties controlling crime, lower collective efficacy due to lack of political power or city responsiveness, geographic proximity to poor neighborhoods, and gang networks or interconnections.…”

The contribution of dementia to the disparity in family wealth between black and non-black Americans

“…Home loss – having a home a decade before death but selling or losing it to foreclosure – increases the odds of wealth exhaustion sixfold among black Americans. As previously documented, home equity is lower for black Americans than for white Americans (Thomas et al ., 2018), yet it constitutes a greater share of their wealth (Gittleman and Wolff, 2004; Burd-Sharps and Rasch, 2015). This combination may leave black Americans with dementia in a financially vulnerable position.…”

“…This was a legal practice until the Fair Housing Act of 1968 (Massey, 2015), and banks persist in such discrimination to the present day (US Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2015). Such practices are blamed for disparities in home-ownership rates as well as the value and growth of home equity (Jackman and Jackman, 1980; Shapiro et al , 2013; Thomas et al ., 2018). Differential opportunities to build and retain equity related to home-ownership, involving not only mortgage lending practices but also less-favourable interest rates, are therefore plausible factors in the persistence of black–white wealth disparity (Krivo and Kaufman, 2004; Oliver and Shapiro, 2006; Chiteji, 2010; Shapiro et al , 2013).…”