Race Still Matters

Abstract
Two techniques are used to examine the extent to which racial housing segregation in the St. Louis metropolitan area in 1990 is attributable to income and housing cost differences between African-Americans and whites. Measurement of segregation within household-income categories revealed that, at all income levels, African-Americans and whites with similar incomes are about as segregated as African-Americans and whites overall. Indirect standardizations based on housing cost and tenure reveal that if those were the only causes of segregation, African-Americans and whites would be far less segregated than they are. The proportion of segregation attributable to such differences is even lower in 1990 than in past censuses.