The Geographic Context of Racial Residential Disattainment

Matthew Hall, Cornell University
Gregory Sharp, Pennsylvania State University

Urban and housing-related research has traditionally focused on understanding racial disparities in residential attainment - inequalities that limit access into residential statuses. Recent scholarship, however, has shown that as racial gaps in homeownership and other attainment outcomes have converged, gaps in post-attainment experiences have widened. We build on this emerging literature by exploring the broader metropolitan context of residential disattainment. To do so, we use microdata from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, linked to neighborhood- and MSA-level census data to assess how both variation in the geographic distribution of racial groups and structural features of metropolitan areas (levels of segregation, conditions of local housing and labor markets) influence the likelihood of exiting homeownership. Given the recent housing crisis and ongoing recovery, we also consider the residential repercussions of housing disattainment by examining neighborhood migration patterns of households undergoing downward housing transitions, and the metropolitan contexts that influence neighborhood selection.