Do declines in residential segregation mean stable neighborhood racial integration in metropolitan America? A research note

Between 1980 and 2000, residential segregation between non-Hispanic whites and blacks, as measured by the index of dissimilarity, declined by 8.7 percentage points. How this decline reflects stable racial integration at the neighborhood level remains to be seen. Using the Neighborhood Change Database, which provides 1980, 1990, and 2000 census-tract level data in 2000 boundaries, the descriptive analyses conducted here reveal three findings. First, the declines found in white–black segregation are due to increases in multiethnic neighborhoods rather than mixed white-and-black neighborhoods. Second, the decline in segregation appears not to be due to the fact that multiethnic neighborhoods are forming and remaining stable over time. Instead it is due to the increase in the number of these neighborhoods at one point in time. Finally, when focusing explicitly on the stability of mixed-race neighborhoods, such neighborhoods are less stable when examined over two decades as compared to one decade.