Racial and Ethnic Residential Segregation in Nonmetropolitan Communities

For at least half a century, much of the literature on residential segregation has primarily focused on large metropolitan areas, where most of the population resides in one or more high-density urban cores and medium-density, outlying suburban environments. Many influential landmark segregation studies have focused on small samples featuring primarily the largest 50–60 metropolitan areas in the country. In contrast, our knowledge of residential segregation outside of metropolitan contexts is very limited, even as nonmetropolitan communities are becoming more racially and ethnically diverse. This is due in large part to the challenges with measuring residential segregation in nonmetropolitan contexts, which we address in this book. By using segregation measures that are corrected for index bias, measuring segregation of households rather than persons, and relying on the often overlooked separation index, we draw substantive conclusions about patterns and trends of White-Black, White-Asian, and White-Latino residential segregation in nonmetropolitan communities from 1990 to 2010. We also further demonstrate the superiority of our methodological choices by comparing our findings to those that would be produced through conventional approaches and by reviewing case studies of selected nonmetropolitan areas. Substantively, we find that segregation in nonmetropolitan communities is often not as high as what is observed in metropolitan areas, especially for Asian and Latino households. However, segregation is certainly capable of being high in nonmetropolitan communities, even when the minority proportion is very small. White-Latino segregation is typically quite low and has remained stable in micropolitan areas while slightly declining in noncore counties. This is more so true for White-Asian segregation in nonmetropolitan communities where segregation is very low and has remained low since at least 1990. Methodologically, we conclude that our innovations to segregation measurement expand opportunities to broaden and deepen the literature to understand the nature of residential segregation in nonmetropolitan communities.