Limited levels of both economic inclusion and racial diversity curtail families’ choices about where to live, block access to neighborhoods with better opportunities, and create areas of concentrated poverty and distress. Segregation also perpetuates exclusion and prevents people of different classes, races, and ethnicities from building the social ties that foster mutual respect, dignity, and belonging. Economically segregated areas of concentrated poverty are associated with an increase in teenage pregnancy, male joblessness, single motherhood, and high school dropout. An increase in economic segregation exacerbates differences in educational attainment between high- and low-income children. Racial and economic segregation can negatively affect people at all stages of the life course and impact the belonging and economic dimensions of mobility from poverty.
Economic Inclusion Metric: Share of residents experiencing poverty living in high-poverty neighborhoods.
This metric measures the share of a jurisdiction’s residents experiencing poverty who live in high-poverty neighborhoods (measured by census tract). A high-poverty neighborhood is one in which over 40 percent of the residents are experiencing poverty.
Validity: Measures of poverty concentration have been widely used to measure the extent and severity of economic exclusion and isolation. The more concentrated and separate people in poverty are from better-resourced neighbors, the more isolated they are from the larger community and the social and economic resources and opportunities it can provide.
Availability: Data required to compute poverty concentration are available from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS).
Frequency: New data for the metric are available annually.
Geography: This metric can be computed for all cities and counties nationwide. For less populated areas, several years of data may need to be pooled. Because this metric reflects the structural conditions facing a city or county’s residents, changes in the metric possibly caused by people moving into or out of a jurisdiction do represent changes to those structural conditions.
Consistency: Poverty concentration can be consistently defined and calculated across all cities and counties over time.
Subgroups: The metric can be disaggregated by race or ethnicity, gender, and other demographic factors. For less populated areas and for certain demographic groups, several years of data may need to be pooled to obtain reliable estimates.
Limitations: This metric can be sensitive to the overall poverty rate of a city or county. Therefore, changes in poverty concentrations need to be assessed with reference to the city or county’s overall poverty rate.
Racial Diversity Metric: Neighborhood exposure index, or the share of a person’s neighbors who are people of other races and ethnicities.
This metric is constructed separately for each racial or ethnic group and reports the average share of that group’s neighbors who are members of other racial or ethnic groups. For example, the exposure index would report the share of people who are Black and Latinx in the census tract of the average white person, the share of people who are white and Latinx in the census tract of the average Black person, and the share of people who are Black and white in the census tract of the average Latinx person. Higher values of the index indicate more neighborhood diversity and more day-to-day exposure of people to neighbors of different races and ethnicities.
Validity: The exposure index is one of several widely used measures of residential segregation or inclusion. It effectively captures the multiracial or multiethnic diversity of American communities, it reflects the experience of individuals of all races and ethnicities, and it provides a comprehensive picture of neighborhood racial and ethnic composition.
Availability: Data required to compute neighborhood exposure indexes are available from the ACS.
Frequency: New data for the metric are available annually.
Geography: The data are available for cities and counties, but also at the neighborhood level. Because this metric reflects the structural conditions facing a jurisdiction’s residents, changes in the metric that may be caused by people moving into or out of a jurisdiction represent changes to those structural conditions.
Consistency: Exposure indexes can be consistently defined and calculated for all jurisdictions over time.
Subgroups: This metric is by definition disaggregated by race or ethnicity.
Limitations: This measure can be sensitive to the overall racial or ethnic composition of a city or county. Therefore, changes in exposure indexes need to be assessed with reference to the city or county’s overall racial or ethnic composition. Further, although this index can be constructed annually, appreciable changes may take many years to observe.
