The Socioeconomic Context of Racial Diversity and Integration in U.S. suburbs, 1990-2010

Abstract

The majority of Blacks, Latinxs, Asians, and whites now live in suburbs in the United States. Concurrently, the majority of the nation’s poor also live in suburbs. These trends suggest that the diversification of suburbs has immense consequences for the geography of racial (in)equality. Using Census data, we ask whether racial residential diversification and integration disproportionately occur in advantaged or disadvantaged suburban contexts. We conceptualize diversity as the racial and ethnic composition of a place; a suburb is highly diverse if it contains multiple racialized groups represented in equal proportions. We conceptualize integration as the spatial arrangements of racialized groups—a place is integrated when different racialized groups live near each other. We find that suburbs with higher levels of racial diversity are more disadvantaged than more racially homogeneous places. At the same time, integrated suburbs are substantially more advantaged than the average suburb independent of levels of diversity. This work contributes to a nascent critical research agenda on racial processes in U.S. suburbs by providing insight into the socioeconomic conditions and potential outcomes of racial diversification and integration.