Publications

Racial Settlement and Metropolitan Land-Use Patterns: Does Sprawl Abet Black-White segregation?

This paper advances a theory of how metropolitan land-use patterns affect racial settlement patterns and tests it by measuring the relationship between seven dimensions of land-use patterns and five dimensions of segregation of Blacks and Whites for a representative sample of 50 large metropolitan areas, using multiple regression analysis. We find substantial, nonlinear relationships between changes in multiple dimensions of segregation and multiple dimensions of land use, with most evincing a direct relationship between more compact patterns and segregation once a threshold value is exceeded. The results can be explained holistically by positing that variations in different dimensions of land-use patterns differentially affect land/housing prices, inter-group propinquity, interracial commonality of commuting destinations, and spatial mismatch, which in turn appear to affect the ability of a metropolitan area to desegregate. But alterations in certain aspects of land use—density/continuity and job compactness—apparently spawn a combination of forces that affect desegregation in contrary ways; which force dominates seemingly depends on how extreme the given land-use pattern has become. These findings hold implications for those designing land-use policies designed to fight sprawl.

In memoriam: Jürgen Friedrichs, 1938–2019

On February 19th, Jurgen Friedrichs, Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology at the University of Cologne, passed away. Over the course of his career, Jurgen made an ...

Homeowner-renter wealth inequalities and position in the rural-urban hierarchy

Prior scholarship has documented and tried to explain growing inequalities in individual wealth holdings—especially between homeowners and renters—but has not considered the role of residential position in the rural-urban hierarchy. We estimate fixed-effect models of one's rank in national net, housing and financial wealth distributions during the 2010–2018 period, based on Norwegian register data on prime-age individuals. We find dramatic geographic differences in trajectories of wealth accumulation that are strongly conditioned by tenure. Residing longer in a more urbanized area—especially in the central Oslo region—results in a substantially higher net wealth position only for homeowners. This result is driven overwhelmingly by their greatly superior gains in housing wealth over the period. By contrast, the net wealth and financial wealth positions for those who always rent are virtually indistinguishable across the hierarchy, regardless of duration of residence. Our evidence suggests that the positive correlation between earnings and rent levels across the rural-urban hierarchy yields this result.

Homeowners and Neighborhood Re-Investment

This book investigates the efforts of homeowners to maintain and improve their dwellings. Their behavior, it has found, depends on economic variables as well as the sociological structure of their neighborhoods. Residential satisfaction, expectations of the neighborhood, and mobility plans were taken into account. Multivariate statistical analyses of models were conducted using household data from Minneapolis and Wooster, Ohio. Three important findings emerged. First, homeowners' sense of solidarity with their neighbors is as significant in determining their efforts at home upkeep as are their income or age. Second, the optimism of homeowners toward increases in property values results in behavior opposite to that produced by optimism about neighborhood quality of life. This implies that different kinds of predictable gaming behavior occur among homeowners, depending on the neighborhoods in which they live. Third, both short-term and extremely long-term plans to move prove damaging to home upkeep. The results of this study form the basis for a better understanding of such residential phenomena as class succession, racial transition, and gentrification. Galster's findings will also be valuable for analyzing policies that attempt to encourage neighborhood reinvestment.

Neighborhood Social Mix and Adults' Income Trajectories: Longitudinal Evidence from Stockholm

We investigate the relationship between neighborhood income composition and income trajectories of adults, employing annual panel data from Stockholm over the 1991–2008 period and multiple measures of neighborhood income mix. We advance the human geography literature in three ways by quantifying neighborhood effects that: (1) are unusually precise due to our large sample size; (2) are arguably causal and unbiased due to the econometric techniques employed; (3) are potentially heterogeneous, varying according to gender, income group, and ethnicity. Our innovative, fixed‐effect change modeling indicates that neighborhood income mix affects subsequent one‐ and five‐year income trajectories of residents in highly heterogeneous ways according to gender, income and ethnicity, and for some groups this effect is substantial. The evidence supports on Pareto improvement grounds a social mix policy that attempts to reduce the incidence of lower‐income dominant neighborhood environments and replace them with more mixed or middle‐income dominant ones.

The Fortunes of Poor Neighborhoods

The authors examine the longitudinal fortunes of the poorest fifth of U.S. metropolitan neighbor-hoods, defined as those with 20% or higher poverty rates in 1980. They employ logistic regression to identify the factors correlated with 1980-1990 increases and decreases in poverty rates across these poor neighborhoods and examine whether factors vary by predominant racial/ethnic composition. Regional economic cycles and population growth performance are the dominant determinants of neighborhood poverty change, although the neighborhood's initial poverty rate also influences it. Neighborhoods with higher poverty rates in 1980 evince less stability. Extremely poor neighborhoods are roughly as likely to experience an increase in poverty of 5 or more percentage points as a comparable decrease in poverty. The authors conclude that continued poverty is not the only or even most likely fate of poor neighborhoods; their fortunes depend on both local and regional context.

How Neighborhood Effects Vary: Childbearing and Fathering among Latino and African American Adolescents

This study examines what neighborhood conditions experienced at age 15 and after are associated with teen childbearing and fathering among Latino and African American youth and whether these neighborhood effects vary by gender and/or ethnicity. Administrative and survey data from a natural experiment are used for a sample of 517 Latino and African American youth whose families were quasi-randomly assigned to public housing operated by the Denver (CO) Housing Authority (DHA). Characteristics of the neighborhood initially assigned by DHA to wait list applicants are utilized as identifying instruments for the neighborhood contexts experienced during adolescence. Cox Proportional Hazards (PH) models reveal that neighborhoods having higher percentages of foreign-born residents but lower levels of social capital robustly predict reduced odds of teen parenting though the magnitude of these effects was contingent on gender and ethnicity. Specifically, the presence of foreign-born neighbors on the risk of teen parenting produced a stronger dampening effect for African American youth when compared to Latino youth. Additionally, the effects of social capital on teen parenting were stronger for males than females.

The Effects of Living in the 'Hood on Child and Adolescent Behavior

Consequences From the Redistribution of Urban Poverty During the 1990s: A Cautionary Tale

Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, the recent spatial redistribution of the urban poor does not necessarily bode well for the future. During the 1990s, the share of metropolitan population living in census tracts with high percentages (more than 40%) of poverty indeed fell significantly, but the shares with 10% to 20% and 20% to 40% poverty rates each rose 1 percentage point. These latter shifts are worrisome because many neighborhoods may have been pushed over their thresholds where poverty concentrations start to create significant external effects for neighbors.

Childhood Housing Tenure and Young Adult Educational Outcomes: Evidence from Sibling Comparisons in Norway

We investigate how childhood housing careers affect young adults’ secondary school and college educational attainments, focusing on the role played by cumulative exposure to homeownership. We analyze Norwegian census and administrative data using extensive controls for youth, household, housing, mobility, and neighborhood characteristics and employ, as a methodological first in this domain, family fixed effects. We find that, compared to an otherwise-comparable sibling experiencing identical residential contexts, a youth who lived one more year in a home owned by their parent(s) had a 1.4 percentage-point higher probability of completing high school by age 21 and a 1.7 percentage-point higher probability of enrolling in college by age 20. These effects arise from homeownership per se, independent of its relationship with dwelling type, mobility, or neighborhood.

U.S. Assisted Housing Programs and Poverty Deconcentration: A Critical Geographic Review

No abstract is provided for this article.

Encouraging Mortgage Lending in 'Underserved' Areas: The Potential for Expanding Home Ownership in the US

This study estimates the size of the potential US home owner market and examines the relative default risks associated with expanded home ownership among lower-income, 'underserved' households. Using the 1990 SIPP database, a logit model is developed that predicts the likelihood that a renter household will move into home ownership during an 18-month period. Parameters are estimated using a white, suburban renter sub-population. These are then applied to a nationally-representative sample of renter householdsto produce an aggregate,expected number of transitions into home ownership. The difference between this expected number and the actual number of transitions represents the baseline estimate of the number of additional transitions that might be expected were lending practices and conditions prevailing for whites in suburban areas to be applied everywhere else. The relative default risks are assessed of these potential home owners and the renter households who moved into home ownership by applying a well-known default probability equation. The resulting distributions of default probabilities are then compared, using low- and median-priced housing cost assumptions and for several income groups. In the extended phase of the analysis, an estimation is made of various pools of prospective home owners that might be tapped with more aggressive lending policies. These prospective home owners have both a large propensity to make the move into home ownership (relative to those that actually do), and do not present above average default risks were they to do so. The baseline analyses indicate that just over 600 000 (2.1 per cent) more US renter households would become home owners during the period if they could buy low-cost homes and the underwriting practices and opportunitiesfound in white suburban areas were applied uniformly across the nation. If they were limited to purchase of a median-cost home, this figure drops slightly to 522 000 (1.85 per cent). Extended analyses suggest that up to 2.71 million low-to-moderateincome renter households (7.6 per cent of all renter households) should prove more attractive to mortgage lenders than the average first-time home buyer and possess a relatively high probability of moving into home ownership.

Racial Differentials in Real Estate Advertising Practices: An Exploratory Case Study

:This article reports on the print media advertising practices of a major real estate company operating in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, during 1981–1984. Statistical findings suggest that, compared to home sellers in a white neighborhood listing with this company, those in an integrated or black neighborhood could expect significantly: (1) lower frequencies of advertisements and open houses noted in the Sunday metropolitan newspaper; (2) higher probabilities of no properties in their area being advertised or advertised only with "one-line" ads; and (3) lower probability of their area being described favorably in the ad Potential nonracial explanations of these findings appear invalid. The potential motivations for these practices and their segregative consequences are analyzed

Urban gentrification: Evaluating alternative indicators

No abstract is provided for this article.

Trans-Atlantic Perspectives on Opportunity, Deprivation and the Housing Nexus

No abstract is provided for this article.

"Urban Opportunity Structure and Racial/Ethnic Polarization"

No abstract is provided for this article.

Implications of Rising Flood Risk for Residential Real Estate Prices and the Location of Employment

Flood risks are forecast to rise significantly across many parts of Europe, USA, and Asia. As the climate warms, sea levels will continue to rise and the water holding capacity of the atmosphere will increase exponentially. At the same time, the cost of building flood barriers will increase disproportionately with every additional centimetre of height. For many countries, these flood risks will be highly localised, however, and with strong spatial spillovers. This paper uses a unique dataset for 5 boroughs in London to develop a spatial econometric simulation model of the impacts of current and future flood risks on house prices and the location of employment. We consider the broader socio-economic implications of our results.

Neighbourhood effects on social outcomes

Residents, academics, and policy makers frequently believe that certain neighbourhood compositions impact on opportunities of those who are exposed to them. Social outcomes such as those connected to employment, levels of education and income and the risk of becoming involved in illegal activity, are frequently seen as influenced by the neighbourhood one is living in. However, isolating the so-called 'neighbourhood effect' on social outcomes from other impacts on these outcomes is not trivial. In this chapter we address some of the challenges researchers and policy makers are confronted with when getting involved in 'neighbourhood effects' debates. Challenges include conceptual issues related to the types of contexts (residential, work, school) and types of compositions (social or other); questions related to the scales to consider, and how to approach the temporal dimension; issues about what mechanisms would produce the effects; and methodological issues (data types, model choices, sources of bias, detecting thresholds).