title: Segregation through the lens of housing unit transition: what roles do the prior residents, the local micro-neighborhood, and the broader neighborhood play?
abstract: This study focuses on segregation as it plays out at the micro-level of housing unit transition. Employing a unique sample that places housing units into micro-neighborhoods and census tracts, this study tests whether the characteristics of the previous residents of the unit, the local micro-neighborhood, or the broader tract best explain the race/ethnicity of the new residents in a housing unit. The results show that the racial/ethnic composition of the local micro-neighborhood has even stronger effects on the race/ethnicity of the new residents than does the racial/ethnic composition of the broader census tract. The results also reveal that even when the racial/ethnic composition of these two contexts are accounted for, the race/ethnicity of the prior residents has a very strong effect on the race/ethnicity of the new residents. I consider possible explanations for this household-level effect. One new theoretical explanation I put forward is that prospective residents use the race/ethnicity of the prior residents as a signal regarding the neighborhood's appropriateness for them; I test and find that this hypothesized signaling effect is even stronger in certain micro-neighborhood, neighborhood, and county contexts.
authors.affiliation: Department of Criminology, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA. john.hipp@UCI.edu
authors.forename: John R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Hipp
mesh_terms: D005006:Ethnicity / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006798:Housing / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D011446:Prospective Studies; D044469:Racial Groups / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012111:Residence Characteristics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D017062:Small-Area Analysis; D012931:Social Environment; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013997:Time Factors