The Effect of Racial and Ethnic Composition on Neighborhood Economic Change: A Multilevel and Longitudinal Look

This article examines the relationship between racial/ethnic composition and neighborhood economic change in a multilevel and longitudinal framework. I employ multilevel modeling to examine how neighborhood minority composition is associated with change in neighborhood relative economic status from 1970 to 2010 in the largest 100 metropolitan areas of the USA. In the multilevel framework, the empirical analysis shows that the shares of black and Hispanic residents are consistently negatively related to neighborhood economic gain even when metropolitan-level factors are taken into account. This study also finds that the negative effect of neighborhood minority composition on neighborhood economic gain is differentiated by deindustrialization and minority composition at the metropolitan level. In the longitudinal framework, the findings show that the negative effect of neighborhood minority composition on neighborhood economic gain has declined over time.