What drives these patterns? An extensive existing body of research suggests a number of causes: racial differences in wealth and assets, continued discrimination in the housing market, residential preferences (which are themselves partly a legacy of past racial hostility and discrimination), and the location of affordable and subsidized housing. Each of these has been shown to contribute to patterns of racial segregation, net of income differences.
Should we worry about these patterns? If we are concerned about equality of opportunity, the answer is yes. Considerable evidence, including new evidence from the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) program, shows that growing up in a poor neighborhood does lasting harm to children’s opportunity for success. Poor neighborhoods are more likely than middle-class neighborhoods to have lower-quality schools and child-care centers, higher rates of crime and violence, and less access to healthy food. In the MTO study, moving to a neighborhood with a 20 percentage point lower poverty rate led, on average, to 31% higher earnings, a 33% increase in college going, and a substantial decrease in single motherhood.
Consequently, the large racial differences in neighborhood conditions we and others have described mean that Black and Hispanic children face a double disadvantage – not only do their families have, on average, fewer economic resources than White children, but their neighborhoods are more disadvantaged as well. Segregation—particularly the racial disparities in neighborhood economic conditions—is therefore an agent of unequal opportunity.
