By Sean F. Reardon and Kendra Bischoff, Stanford University
US2010 Project, November 2011
Report Abstract
As overall income inequality grew in the last four decades, high- and low-income families have become increasingly less likely to live near one another. Mixed income neighborhoods have grown rarer, while affluent and poor neighborhoods have grown much more common. In fact, the share of the population in large and moderate-sized metropolitan areas who live in the poorest and most affluent neighborhoods has more than doubled since 1970, while the share of families living in middle-income neighborhoods dropped from 65 percent to 44 percent. The residential isolation of the both poor and affluent families has grown over the last four decades, though affluent families have been generally more residentially isolated than poor families during this period. Income segregation among African Americans and Hispanics grew more rapidly than among non-Hispanic whites, especially since 2000. These trends are consequential because people are affected by the character of the local areas in which they live. The increasing concentration of income and wealth (and therefore of resources such as schools, parks, and public services) in a small number of neighborhoods results in greater disadvantages for the remaining neighborhoods where low- and middle-income families live.
From the Conclusion
During the last four decades, the isolation of the rich has been consistently greater than the isolation of the poor. Although much of the scholarly and policy discussion about the effects of segregation and neighborhood conditions focuses on the isolation of poor families in neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage, it is perhaps equally important to consider the implications of the substantial, and growing, isolation of high-income families. Given that in 2008 the top 10 percent of earners controlled approximately 48 percent of all income in the United States (Piketty & Saez, 2010), the increasing isolation of the affluent from low- and moderate-income families means that a significant proportion of societyās resources are concentrated in a smaller and smaller proportion of neighborhoods. As we argued above, this has significant consequences for low- and middle-income families, because the isolation of the rich may lead to lower public and private investments in resources, services, and amenities that benefit large shares of the population, such as schools, parks, and public services.
http://cepa.stanford.edu/system/assets/drupal/RussellSageIncomeSegregationreport.pdf
Comment:
By Don McCanne, MD
As the more affluent members of our society continue to concentrate themselves in their upscale neighborhoods, they take our resources with them, including some of the best of our health care services. Not only do they leave behind fewer resources for low- and moderate-income families, they also leave behind the political will to do something about it.
Can we convince those in the affluent communities that most of them are still a part of the 99 percent? Or will their guileless but infelicitous complacency perpetuate inertia?