The geography of rental housing discrimination, segregation, and social exclusion: New evidence from Sydney

We investigate whether rental housing discrimination directed against 2 predominant ethnic minority groups in Sydney, Australia, is more likely to occur in neighborhoods with a particular mix of ethnicities, socioeconomic profiles, or quality of social goods and whether this geographic pattern reinforces spatial disadvantages of these minorities in a way that abets their social exclusion. We construct measures of differential treatment based on in-person paired testing conducted in 2013, with Anglo, Indian, and Muslim Middle Eastern testers. We summarize 4 dimensions of postcode-level social goods using a principal component analysis reflecting school quality, crime rates, resident employment rates, proximate jobs and job growth, and commuting options. Our ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions show that differential treatment in the Sydney rental market is strongly related to a neighborhood’s ethnic composition and 2 aspects of its social goods involving both desirable and undesirable components but is not related to the socioeconomic characteristics of the neighborhood’s population.