Racial Segregation Measures

sesr0987 over 7 years ago

Hello all,

I am looking for a way to map racial segregation on either the block group or census tract level and was hoping you might have some data source suggestions. I have seen census data used to compute dissimilarity or isolation indexes (for example, http://www.censusscope.org/us/s25/rank_dissimilarity_white_black.html), but was hoping to find something at a finer grain.

Please let me know if you have any suggestions!

Thank you,

Sharon

Andrew Beveridge over 7 years ago

Hi Sharon--

You should look at the work of Elizabith Roberto www.elizabethroberto.com. She has done some very interesting work using blocks and transportation and physical boundaries. She also has developed a divergence index, which allows one to see the contribution of segregation from each unit, whether blockgroup, tract or block, as well as by place.

Andy Beveridge
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Lisa Neidert over 7 years ago

Sharon,

Two things. First, the Frey data are based on census tracts, even though their result are for places. Second, there is a recent article in Demography about how the somewhat noisier ACS sample affects dissimilarity measures. That will be exacerbated if you used block groups or blocks:

Measuring Residential Segregation With the ACS: How the Margin of Error Affects the Dissimilarity Index
link.springer.com/.../s13524-016-0545-z
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