Civil Rights Act of 1968 - Segregation Index

Segregation Index

Nancy A. Denton and Douglass S. Massey devised a segregation index to measure the degree of segregation of African-Americans and whites according to income levels. Their objective was to show that the discrimination of African-Americans when it comes to housing was not related to income level, which many thought to be true. Many have argued that continuing segregation is due to African-Americans generally making less money, which means they cannot afford to live in the same neighborhoods as affluent whites. But as the segregation index by Denton and Massey showed, blacks still remained highly segregated from whites no matter what the income level was. For example, in 1980, black families earning $25,000 a year or less had an index level of 86 while those earning $50,000 or more had an index level of 83. This trend was common throughout most major metropolitan areas, especially prevalent in the northern cities. The goal of this index was to show that upward economic mobility did not affect the level of segregation in America’s cities. It should be noted that Denton and Massey also surveyed Hispanics and Asians, and found on average the indices to be 64 which meant the poorest Hispanics and Asians were still less segregated than the most affluent blacks. Leslie Carr notes that in 1990, 74 percent of whites live in suburbs, while most African-Americans and Hispanics live in urban areas, and that African-Americans were a majority population in 14 cities (with populations over 100,000). The purpose of this study was to show that housing practices are indeed racially and not economically discriminatory .