The following are some recently-published academic studies of housing segregation as well as the authors' summaries. If available, their section snippets, full-text, other summaries, and publishers are available online via the links.
"Racial Segregation in Housing Markets and the Erosion of Black Wealth," by Prottoy A. Akbar, Sijie Li Hickly, Allison Shertzer, & Randall P. Walsh. The Review of Economics and Statistics (2025) 107 (1): 42–54. https://www.asc.ohio-state.edu/logan.155/pdf/logan-and-parman_segregation-jel-final-updated-after-replication.pdf.
This paper studies how the expansion of segregated neighborhoods eroded black wealth in prewar American cities. Using a novel sample of matched addresses, we find that over a single decade rental prices soared by roughly 50% on city blocks that transitioned from all white to majority black. Meanwhile, pioneering black families paid a 28% premium to buy a home on a majority white block, after which their homes lost 10% of their value. These findings strongly suggest that segregated housing markets cost black families much of the gains associated with moving north during the Great Migration.
Residential segregation is a central factor in explaining socioeconomic gaps across race and ethnicity in the United States. Place of residence directly impacts access to schools, jobs, and healthcare. There is an ever-evolving literature across the social sciences disciplines documenting the general patterns in residential segregation as well as the causes and consequences of those patterns. This article reviews key parts of that literature. We provide an overview of the measurement of segregation and the general evolution of segregation patterns over time and at different scales. We then review the literatures on both segregation’s determinants and its impact on a range of socioeconomic outcomes. We highlight the potential for new insights to be gained from new approaches to quantifying segregation and new frameworks such as stratification for understanding its complex roots.
"The Diverging Paths of Black-White Segregation in Urban America, 1970–1990," by Richard Sander & Yana Kucheva. American Journal of Sociology: Volume 130, Number 4. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/733012.
Measures of Black-White housing segregation show striking uniformity across metropolitan areas in 1970 and very uneven - sometimes quite large - declines in the 1970s and 1980s. We argue that after 1970, Black households were more likely to move into neighborhoods far from existing Black enclaves and that when they did so in substantial numbers, metropolitan-level segregation declined significantly. We further argue that the volume of Black migration to outlying areas depended on a few key demographic characteristics of metropolitan areas—hence, the variation across these areas in the rate of desegregation.
Using internal census data at the household, census-tract, and metropolitan levels, we show that framing desegregation as an interrelated process of intra- and inter-metropolitan migration flows and demographic structural constraints can account for changes in Black-White residential dissimilarity during the time period from 1970 to 1990 with considerable precision. Our analysis also sheds new light on the likely role of national fair housing policies in changing Black residential patterns.
"Eroding Integration: 21st Century Segregation Trends in U.S. Public and Charter Schools and Implications for the Enduring Promise of Brown," by Erica Frankenberg, Caprial Farrington, & Kathryn A. McDermott. Urban Education 2025: 1–35. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/00420859251329310.
The article examines major patterns of national, regional, and urban school segregation over the last two decades (2002–2021) in the context of resistance and legal challenges to Brown. These decades included ongoing housing segregation, isolation of urban schools by rigid school district boundaries, and funding disparities that have shaped racial segregation since the mid-1970s. Within this period emerged several policy factors that undermined full implementation of Brown: limitations for race-conscious student assignment policies, rapid proliferation of market-oriented policies like charter schools and high stakes accountability, and the gentrification of cities alongside growing racial diversification and segregation in the suburbs. Drawing on EC Boddie’s adaptive discrimination framework, this article analyzes changes in demographic trends from 2002–2021.
Our findings reveal a continuation of several longstanding trends, including increased racial/ethnic diversity in public school enrollment; deepening racial isolation within districts; persistent, high isolation for Black students; high but declining isolation for white students; growing isolation for Hispanic and Asian students; and substantial variation across regions. The growth of charter school enrollment and segregation since 2002 is striking, with substantial increases in many urban areas. Seventy years after Brown v. Board of Education, these trends reveal the continued effects of adaptive discrimination via privatization.
"Rental deserts, segregation, and zoning," by Airgood-Obrycki, W., Maaoui, M., & Wedeen, S. Journal of Urban Affairs, 2025: 1–20. https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/research-areas/working-papers/rental-deserts-segregation-and-zoning.
Restrictive zoning and NIMBY attitudes have left nearly a third of neighborhoods across the United States with few options for renters. The concentration of rental housing in some neighborhoods and the exclusion of rental options from others reinforces enduring patterns of residential segregation by race and income. Neighborhoods with a lower share of rental housing are disproportionately suburban, higher-income, and white.
We use the concept of rental deserts to highlight places with few rental opportunities for households and define these as neighborhoods where rental units make up less than 20% of the housing stock. We examine the characteristics of rental deserts, arguing that uneven geographies of rental opportunities bolster patterns of socioeconomic and racial segregation because renters are disproportionately lower-income and people of color. We investigate variations in the spatial distribution of rental deserts across and within metropolitan areas as well as resulting segregation by mapping divergence indices that measure the unevenness of rental housing within metropolitan areas. We find an association between rental deserts and a lack of neighborhood-level racial and economic diversity. We also find that restrictive zoning and land use regimes are associated with the presence of rental deserts, a finding that generally holds in cities and suburbs alike.
We conclude by recommending zoning changes that pave the way for multifamily housing and rental options in exclusionary communities, to confront inequities in where people can live. While zoning changes have the potential to increase housing options for renters, creating socioeconomically integrated, mixed-tenure communities will also require building more homes at lower price points, increasing access to homeownership, and expanding housing subsidies.
"Historical Redlining and Community-Reported Housing Quality: A Spatial Analysis," by Salvatore Milletich, Andres Manrique, Sonia Karsan, Tamara Spikes, Anuj Nanavanti, Jared Bailey, Eric Coker & Christine C. Ekenga. Journal of Urban Health 2025:102, 49–60. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39777711/.
Historical redlining, a racially discriminatory practice implemented by the U.S. government in the 1930s, has been associated with present-day environmental outcomes. However, there is limited research examining the relationship between historical redlining and contemporary housing quality. The objective of the present study was to investigate the relationship between historical redlining and contemporary housing quality in Atlanta, Georgia. Spatial patterns of housing code violation complaints from 2015 to 2019 were examined using point-pattern and spatial cluster analyses. We used Bayesian hierarchical models, accounting for spatial autocorrelation, to estimate associations between historical redlining and housing complaints, after adjusting for contemporary neighborhood characteristics, such as poverty, median structure age, vacant and renter-occupied properties, and residential racial segregation. A total of 48,626 housing code violation complaints were reported during the study period, including 6531 complaints deemed “hazardous.”
Historical redlining was a statistically significant predictor of housing complaints. We observed a 167% increased risk (IRR = 2.67, 95% confidence interval = 1.49, 4.77) of housing complaints for historically redlined neighborhoods compared to neighborhoods historically graded as “best” or “still desirable,” after adjusting for neighborhood characteristics. Redlined neighborhoods also had an increased risk of “hazardous” housing complaints (IRR = 1.94, 95% confidence interval = 1.11, 3.40), after adjusting for contemporary neighborhood characteristics. Historically redlined neighborhoods exhibited disproportionately higher rates of housing code violation complaints. Spatial analysis of housing code violation complaints can provide insights into housing quality and inform interventions targeted at addressing the environmental legacy of structural racism.
"Race, historical redlining, and contemporary transportation noise disparities in the United States" by Timothy W. Collins & Sara. E. Grineski. Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology 2025: volume 35, pages 50–61. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38760532/.
Legacies of discriminatory federal housing practices - e.g., racialized property appraisal by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) and institutionalized redlining by the Federal Housing Administration—include disparate present-day environmental health outcomes. Noise pollution is health-harming, but just one study has associated contemporary noise with redlining in some HOLC-mapped United States (US) cities, while two national studies found associations between greater neighborhood-level people of color composition and increased noise. No studies have examined noise pollution exposure disparities across all HOLC-mapped cities or based on the intersection of race/ethnicity and redlining.
We address three objectives: (1) Assess disparities in fine-scale, per person transportation noise exposures by historical redlining status across all HOLC-mapped cities. (2) Quantify disparities in noise exposures by race/ethnicity nationwide. (3) Explore interactions between redlining status and race/ethnicity in noise exposures.
We find an approximately monotonic association for excess transportation noise with HOLC grade, marked by a pronounced exposure increase (17.4 dBA or 3× loudness) between contemporary residents of grade A (highest-graded) and D (lowest-graded) neighborhoods, a pattern consistent across HOLC-mapped cities. People of color experience ~7 dBA greater (2× louder) excess transportation noise exposures than White people nationwide, a pattern consistent across US counties. Noise exposure disparities are larger by HOLC grade than by race/ethnicity. However, contemporary racial/ethnic noise exposure disparities persist within each HOLC grade at levels approximating those disparities existing in ungraded areas, indicating that historical redlining is one of multiple discriminatory practices shaping contemporary national soundscape injustices.
"Historical Redlining and Current Neighborhood Social Vulnerability in the United States," by Oluwatosin Ogunmayowa, Alicia Lozano, Alexandra Hanlon, Natalie Cook, Frederick Paige, & Charlotte Baker. Environmental Justice 2025: Vol. 18, No. 1. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/381210910_Historical_Redlining_and_Current_Neighborhood_Social_Vulnerability_in_the_United_States.
In this study, we examined the association between historical redlining, a government-sanctioned racial discriminatory practice of the 1930s, and present-day neighborhood social vulnerability in the United States. We obtained the 2018 social vulnerability index (SVI) data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, linked it to 1930s Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) redlining maps, and assigned U.S. neighborhoods to one of four HOLC grades (“A: best,” “B: still desirable,” “C: definitely declining,” and “D: hazardous/redlined”).
Using multilevel models, we found significant association between historical HOLC redlining grades of neighborhoods and present-day overall, socioeconomic, minority status, household composition, and housing type/transportation vulnerability. Neighborhoods formerly assigned less favorable grades by the HOLC in the 1930s showed significantly greater vulnerability presently than those that were graded more favorably (i.e., “D” > “C” > “B” > “A” in SVI). For instance, neighborhoods that were formerly graded “B: still desirable,” “C: definitely declining,” and “D: hazardous/redlined” were 0.068-, 0.107-, and 0.114-unit greater in present-day overall SVI score, respectively, than neighborhoods previously graded “A: best” (mean score of 0.477). Also, we found that the relationship between HOLC security grades and all present-day neighborhood SVIs, except the household composition SVI, varied by city.
This study indicates that historical redlining, an indicator of structural racism, has a lasting impact on neighborhood social vulnerability.
"Economic Inequality and the Geography of Activity Space Segregation: Combining Mobile Device Data and Census Data," by Siwei Cheng, Yongjun Zhang, & Jenna Shaw. RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, January 2025: 11 (1) 132-152. https://www.rsfjournal.org/content/11/1/132.full.
This article combines daily mobility data collected via mobile device and the American Community Survey to create comprehensive measures of activity space segregation across geographic areas in the United States. We extend conventional measures of spatial segregation to incorporate exposure in individuals’ routine activities, weighted by the flows of individuals between census block groups. Our analysis reveals three key findings. First, metropolitan areas vary significantly in the degree of activity space segregation. Second, individuals exhibit a lesser degree of income and racial segregation in their activity space than in their residential space. Third, income inequality at the metropolitan statistical area level is associated with greater isolation for both lowest and highest income groups; economic inequality exerts a more substantial influence on activity space isolation than residential segregation.
Our empirical analysis reveals substantial variation in income and racial segregation of activity spaces across metropolitan areas. Although the mobility-based isolation both income and racial groups experience tends to be lower than distance-based isolation, racial boundaries impose a more significant constraint on individuals’ daily activities than income disparities do. Income inequality at the MSA level is associated with greater relative isolation for both advantaged and disadvantaged racial and income groups. Moreover, although individuals tend to offset some of the residential segregation based on income and race through their daily activities, segregation within their activity space responds more sensitively to economic inequality compared to their residential space. Our results call attention to activity space as an especially pivotal domain of socioeconomic segregation in times of rising economic inequality.
"Housing as an engine of inequality and the role of policy," by Cody Hochstenbach, Icon,Justin Kadi, Sophia Maalsen, & Megan Nethercote. International Journal of Housing Policy, 25(1), 1–17. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19491247.2024.2444043.
Recent years have seen a steep increase in studies, also published in the pages of International Journal of Housing Policy, seeking to chart and theorize housing-based inequalities. These studies pay ample attention to homeowners’ wealth accumulation prospects, with many homes –particularly those located in the center of popular cities– recording house price increases exceeding the annual salaries of middle-income workers. Or, simply put, these homes have come to ‘earn more than jobs’ (Ryan-Collins, J., & Murray, C., "When homes earn more than jobs: The rentierization of the Australian housing market," Housing Studies, 2023, 38:10, 1888–1917).. Rocketing house prices help generate stark wealth divides between homeowners and tenants, who are excluded from these capital gains (Pfeffer, F. T., & Waitkus, N., "The wealth inequality of nations," American Sociological Review, 2021, 86:4, 567–602.), as well as other outsiders such as young adults who see no option but to prolong their stay in the parental home. A further stratification exists among homeowners, between heavily mortgaged, equity poor homeowners and the (sometimes outright) owners of valuable property in coveted locations seeing the values of their properties inflate.
The literature on housing classes thus directs most attention to the economic dimension of class stratification and to property owners and their capacity to generate market returns (i.e., capital gains and/or rent). Conversely, other literatures home in on a wider array of social inequalities rooted in housing and, in doing so, they typically zoom in on the ‘centrality of housing for the urban poor,' shifting attention from one extreme to the other, from the property-rich to the property-poor. For the property poor, academics have long conceptualized housing as a potentially important source of precarity. Crucially, the concept of precarity moves beyond opportunity to generate market returns from one’s home, or lack thereof, to instead focus on a broader range of potential disadvantages impacting the precariously housed. Those disadvantages represent types of residential precarities that include, for instance, disproportionally high housing cost burdens relative to their incomes, short-term and insecure rental contracts, weak tenant protections overall, substandard dwelling quality and overcrowding. Even if these precarities disproportionally impact renters, they certainly do not impact all renters, let alone equally so. Likewise, marginalized homeowners may also be confronted with specific precarities, such as problematic debt levels, risks of mortgage defaults and evictions that may follow.
In recent decades, urban areas have faced increasing flood risk, disproportionately affecting marginalized groups. The 1930s redlining practices in the United States have had socioeconomic and environmental impacts in multiple cities. However, there remains an incomplete understanding of the relationship between redlining and urban flood risk. This study addresses this need by investigating the spatial distribution of green infrastructure (GI) and impervious surfaces, as influential factors in mitigating and exacerbating flood risk, respectively, in the flood-prone redlined zones in Houston, Texas. Census blocks that intersected with floodplains and redlining map categories were identified, assigning redlining classes based on the overlap percentages. The proportions of impervious surfaces and GI elements were extracted from land cover data. Their median ratios were compared across redlining categories, and significant clusters of high imperviousness and low GI were mapped.
The study found higher imperviousness and lower GI median ratios in redlined zones with strict housing loan restrictions categorized as “Hazardous” and “Definitely Declining.” In addition, the significant clusters of high imperviousness and low GI were mainly located within these redlining zones. The spatial and temporal resolution limitations of available data are acknowledged. Higher-resolution land cover data spanning different periods and comprehensive flood hazard datasets including future climate change scenarios are recommended for more accurate analysis. This study linked prior research on flood risk disparities and historical discriminatory practices, revealing significant spatial relationships between Houston’s redlined zones and the distribution of GI and imperviousness in flood-prone areas.
