Symmetric measures of segregation, segregation curves, and Blackwell's criterion

This paper first proposes a new way to use segregation curves to examine whether one distribution of people across groups (e.g., occupations or neighborhoods) is more segregated than another. It then uses Blackwell's criterion to extend the argument to more than two types of people. The basic idea is that by introducing additional assumptions about the nature of segregation, one obtains a more complete ranking of distributions. The paper demonstrates that the assumption of “symmetry in types”-an assumption that appears frequently in the literature on segregation measurement-has implications for both segregation curves and Blackwell's criterion.