MIGRATION, SEGREGATION, AND THE GEOGRAPHIC CONCENTRATION OF POVERTY

We analyze patterns of African-American mobility and white mobility in U.S. cities to determine the causes of geographically concentrated poverty. Using a special tabulation of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics that appends U.S. Census tract data to individual records, we analyze the movement of poor and nonpoor people into and out of five types of neighborhoods: white nonpoor; black nonpoor; black poor; black very poor; and racially and socioeconomically mixed neighborhoods. We find little support for the view that the geographic concentration of black poverty is caused by the out-migration of nonpoor blacks or that it stems from the net movement of blacks into poverty. Rather our results suggest that the geographic concentration of poor blacks is caused by the residential segregation of African-Americans in urban housing markets.