MPRC Presents Michael Bader

'Segregation in Place: Estimating the Contribution of White Flight to Racial Segregation in the 21st Century'

"Segregation in Place: Estimating the Contribution of White Flight to Racial Segregation in the 21st Century"

About the Presentation

"White flight" is commonly used to explain decreasing shares of white residents in neighborhoods. This explanation, however, ignores the role of the natural change that results from births and deaths on neighborhood racial composition over time. This paper decomposes racial change in U.S. metropolitan neighborhoods from 2000 to 2010 into natural increase, natural decrease, and net migration. Natural change explains a substantial part of neighborhood racial change and has a small, but significant, role in metropolitan racial segregation. The results show that segregation comes about, at least in part, through racial apathy rather than racial antipathy of whites.

About the Speaker

Michael Bader studies how cities and neighborhoods have evolved since the height of the Civil Rights Movement, and how these changes affect racial health inequality. To accomplish this research Dr. Bader has developed methodological tools that combine survey data with “big data” to study neighborhood environments.

Dr. Bader is an associate professor of sociology and policy at American University where he is the Associate Director of the Metropolitan Policy Center and Director of the DC Area Survey. He is an investigator with the Built Environment and Health project.  He is also a Visiting Scholar at MPRC.

For more information, contact Jennifer Doiron at 301-405-6403 or doiron1@umd.edu.