Jeffrey M. Timberlake

Change in Racial and Ethnic Residential Inequality in American Cities, 1970–2000

We complement and extend research on change in racial and ethnic residential segregation by estimating determinants of change from 1970 to 2000 in four measures of residential inequality—dissimilarity, entropy, isolation, and net difference—between American Whites, Blacks, Asians, and Latinos. Because we use a longer time horizon and multiple measures, our findings clearly demonstrate some convergence in residential location patterns across groups, indicating gradual spatial assimilation in U.S. metropolitan areas. Although Blacks continue to be more segregated than either Asians or Latinos, residential inequality has declined more rapidly for Blacks than for the other two groups, particularly in terms of neighborhood socioeconomic status. We also find that all three groups, but particularly Asians, have been converting income gains relative to Whites into improved neighborhood socioeconomic status more than into increased residential integration with Whites.

Racial and Ethnic Trends in the Suburbanization of Poverty in U.S. Metropolitan Areas, 1980–2010

ABSTRACT: This research examines recent trends in the suburbanization of poor non-Latino Whites, Blacks, and Asians, and Latinos of all races in the United States. The authors find strong associations between a temporally lagged measure of suburban housing supply and poverty suburbanization during the period 2006–2010 for all groups, but these associations are largely attenuated by similarly lagged controls for suburban affordable housing and employment, as well as for other characteristics of metropolitan areas. Findings indicate that poor non-Latino Whites and Asians have higher suburbanization rates in metropolitan areas with higher levels of suburban employment, while the suburbanization of the Black and Latino poor is more strongly related to the availability of affordable suburban housing. Increases in housing supply are associated with change in poverty suburbanization over time for Whites, Blacks, and Latinos. In addition, increases in affordable rental housing are associated with increases in the suburbanization of the Latino poor.

Separate, But How Unequal? Ethnic Residential Stratification, 1980 to 1990

Much recent scholarship has focused on inequality in the socioeconomic status of neighborhoods in which different racial and ethnic groups are concentrated. However, the most widely used measures of residential inequality merely describe the extent to which groups are nominally differentiated in residential space. I use 1980 and 1990 U.S. Census data to calculate levels of and changes in residential stratification—the degree to which members of one group tend to live in more advantaged neighborhoods than members of another group—between whites and blacks, Latinos, and Asians. Results both confirm and qualify conventional interpretations of residential inequality when measured as nominal–level segregation. For example, although in 1990 Latinos and Asians were similarly and only moderately segregated from whites, Asians experienced dramatically lower levels of neighborhood disadvantage. I also find that although levels of segregation were nearly identical in central cities and suburban rings, residential stratification was much lower for suburban residents than for their central city counterparts. I conclude by discussing implications of the findings for theoretical and empirical research on residential inequality.

Effects of Conservative Sociopolitical Attitudes on Public Support for Drug Rehabilitation Spending

Objective. In this article we investigate why traditionally conservative social groups show less support for spending on drug rehabilitation programs than for drug control spending in general. Methods. Using data from the 1984 through 1998 General Social Surveys, we first estimate logistic regressions of support for drug control spending across five sociopolitical cleavages. We then estimate effects of three types of sociopolitical attitudes on support for drug spending within traditionally conservative groups. Results. Resistance to rehabilitation spending among conservatives is related to their opposition to the welfare state, punitive attitudes toward criminals, and among whites, racial attitudes. Conclusions. Our findings suggest that citizens may withhold support for a social policy to the extent that it evokes negative associations with other salient sociopolitical issues or attitudes. We discuss the importance of these associations for understanding the relationships among political debate, public opinion, and policy outcomes.

How Should We Wage the War on Drugs? Determinants of Public Preferences for Drug Control Alternatives

When citizens are presented with alternative policy solutions to a given social problem, why do they choose to support one over another? In this article, the authors analyze a survey of residents of the five largest U.S. metropolitan areas to understand determinants of public support for spending on three major components of American drug control policy: law enforcement programs, rehabilitative services for addicts, and school-based prevention programs. The authors estimate effects of self-interest, political socialization, and policy attitudes on support for total drug control expenditures and on preferences for each drug control alternative versus the others. Effects of group self-interest, societal interest, and political socialization change dramatically across dimensions of support. Policy attitudes are strong predictors of both types of support, whereas individual self-interest measures are not associated with either dimension.

Trends in the Suburbanization of Racial/Ethnic Groups in U.S. Metropolitan Areas, 1970 to 2000

This research examines recent trends in suburbanization for non-Latino Whites, Blacks, and Asians, and Latinos of all races. The authors find some association between group-level acculturation and socioeconomic status and 2000 suburbanization rates; however, these associations are largely attenuated by controls for suburban housing supply and do not explain much of the variation in changes in suburbanization rates from 1970 to 2000. Suburban housing supply is strongly associated with 2000 levels of suburbanization, yet these effects are largely attenuated by controlling for the suburban share of employment and affordable housing. Finally, the authors find large effects of change in suburban housing supply on change in group suburbanization rates; however, these effects are much weaker for Blacks relative to the other groups.

Battle Fatigue: Is Public Support Waning for “War”-Centered Drug Control Strategies?

Since the early 1980s, federal drug control expenditures have soared in response to six presidential administrations’ commitment to the “war on drugs.” During this period, spending on criminal justice programs grew from 30% of the total drug control budget to 52%, whereas the share devoted to drug treatment programs declined from 31% to 18%. Although there appears to be a broad and enduring consensus among the public for government to address the drug problem, little is known about what kinds of strategies Americans prefer. In this article, the authors analyze data from a recent survey of residents of the five largest U.S. metropolitan areas to explore public opinion about domestic drug control policy. The authors found that although respondents seemed generally favorable toward spending on the drug problem, they did not support the way the war on drugs is being fought. In particular, support for criminal justice approaches to drug control lagged significantly behind support for prevention and treatment strategies. This finding is consistent across all sociodemographic categories.

Race, Real Estate, and Uneven DevelopmentRace, Real Estate, and Uneven Development: The Kansas City Experience, 1900 to 2000, by GothamKevin Fox. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. 204 pp.

Over the years, urban sociologists and demographers have devoted significant resources (human, fossil fuel, and wood pulp) to investigating the existence and persistence of racial residential segregation. Researchers have generally concluded that segregation issues from three primary factors: the morally neutral preferences of blacks and whites to live with people of like racial backgrounds; racial prejudice among whites and fear of racially motivated harassment among blacks; and sins of commission and omission by government legislatures and agencies, and by financial, insurance, and real estate institutions (FIRE). Despite their indispensable contributions, most prior studies of the causes of segregation are susceptible to one or both of the following critiques. First, although researchers document the existence of, for example, whites’ intolerance of black neighbors, or real estate agents’ shabby treatment of black home seekers, few studies have shown how such factors coalesce to produce or maintain segregation in particular places at particular times. Second, scholars typically focus on either private citizens or corporate actors, thereby neglecting the connections between and within the two groups. Yet citizens cast votes for politicians, FIRE elites lobby politicians and contribute to their campaigns, and home seekers pay developers and real estate agents to furnish them homes. Therefore, it is likely that the attitudes and actions of one group of actors have an effect on those of another. In many respects, Kevin Fox Gotham’s Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development brilliantly sidesteps and even surmounts these critiques. Using data from archives, newspapers, published reports, and retrospective interviews, Gotham “document[s] the role of private interests and government policy in the development of racial residential segregation while at the same time highlighting the connections between race, uneven development, and the real estate industry” (p. 3). In so doing, he shows how particular actions undertaken by real estate and city elites had specific, empirically measurable (and measured) effects on the distribution of blacks and whites in Kansas City from roughly 1930 to 1975. He argues that the attitudes, behaviors, and experiences of private citizens were affected by federal and local policymakers, and that both sets of actors were deeply influenced by real estate industry agents and elites. Though slender in size, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development is packed with provocative arguments and fascinating empirical details. I occasionally found the data to be insufficient to do the theoretical work that Gotham asked of them; however, I interpret this as an indication of the ambition, not the implausibility, of the arguments. For example, one implication of Gotham’s “racialization of space” thesis is that real estate actors did not simply profit from existing white racism, rather, they engineered it and shaped it in order to reap the benefits. In Gotham’s words: “The long-lasting effect of this [segregationist] racial ideology was to disseminate and popularize the stereotype that racial minorities, especially blacks, are a blighting influence and transferred to the public the belief that a quality neighborhood is homogeneous rather than diverse” (p. 46, my emphasis). In other words, economic motivations induced real estate elites and rank and file agents to instill in the minds of white citizens the notion that to live in a decent neighborhood is to live in a white neighborhood. However, Gotham does not offer sufficient evidence to adjudicate between this claim and the obvious alternative hypothesis that whites on their own believed that blacks were a “blighting influence,” and that real estate actors were simply responding to (and profiting from) white demand. In fact, Gotham himself suggests that neighborhoods undergoing racial transition were unstable, and that the presence of blacks did lead to a host of problems. He points out that “[i]n many cities, increased competition for housing and consequent racial conflicts including intimidation, harassment, cross burnings, and

62.50 cloth. ISBN: 0-7914-5377-4.

We investigate the relationship between stereotypes of immigrants and assessments of the impact of immigration on U.S. society. Our analysis exploits a split-ballot survey of registered voters in Ohio, who were asked to evaluate both the characteristics of one of four randomly assigned immigrant groups and perceived impacts of immigration. We find that associations between impact assessments and stereotypes of Middle Eastern, Asian, and European immigrants are weak and fully attenuated by control covariates. By contrast, this relationship for Latin American immigrants is strong and robust to controls, particularly in the areas of unemployment, schools, and crime. Our findings suggest that public views of the impacts of immigration are strongly connected to beliefs about the traits of Latin American immigrants in particular.

20.95 paper. ISBN: 0-7914-5378-2.: The Kansas City Experience, 1900 to 2000

This research examines the impact of neighborhood ethnoracial composition on the likelihood that neighborhoods that could gentrify do gentrify over time. Drawing on findings from the gentrification and residential preference literatures, we hypothesize that the percentage of Black and Latino residents in neighborhoods in 1980 is associated with the probability of gentrification, conditional on the racial composition of neighborhoods in 2010. We test these hypotheses with analyses of census data for tracts in the central cities of Chicago and New York in 1980 to 2010. We find that the percentage of Black residents in 1980 was negatively associated with gentrified White and positively associated with gentrified Black neighborhoods, and that percent Latino in 1980 was positively associated with gentrified Latino neighborhoods. Finally, we found strong evidence that gentrification in these cities was much more likely to occur in neighborhoods close to the central business district.