Neighborhood selection and the social reproduction of concentrated racial inequality. Demography 45

In this paper, we consider neighborhood selection as a social process central to the reproduction of racial inequality in neighborhood attainment. We formulate a multilevel model that decomposes multiple sources of stability and change in longitudinal trajectories of achieved neighborhood in-come among nearly 4,000 Chicago families followed for up to seven years wherever they moved in the United States. Even after we adjust for a comprehensive set of fi xed and time-varying covariates, racial inequality in neighborhood attainment is replicated by movers and stayers alike. We also study the emergent consequences of mobility pathways for neighborhood-level structure. The temporal sort-ing by individuals of different racial and ethnic groups combines to yield a structural pattern of fl ows between neighborhoods that generates virtually nonoverlapping income distributions and little ex-change between minority and white areas. Selection and racially shaped hierarchies are thus mutually constituted and account for an apparent equilibrium of neighborhood inequality. he sorting of individuals by place is a fundamental concern to the burgeoning litera-ture on neighborhood effects. Because individuals make choices and differentially allocate themselves nonrandomly, estimates of neighborhood effects on social outcomes—whether crime, mortality, teenage childbearing, employment, low birth weight, mental health, o