Metropolitan Structure and Intergenerational Spatial Mobility

• In Event: 366 - Open Refereed Roundtable Session II
  In Refereed Roundtable: B. Table 16. Urban Sociology I

Abstract

This study develops an analytical framework for understanding and evaluating the importance of the local opportunity structure for patterns of intergenerational spatial mobility. Of key interest are legacy effects: The effects of residential constraints to spatial mobility in one generation that manifest themselves in future generations. This framework helps us understand the multiple pathways through which past and current levels of racial residential segregation, racial and ethnic diversity, economic specialization, suburban sprawl, and urban development affect residential outcomes and stratification processes more generally. There is considerable metropolitan-area heterogeneity in the effect of parent’s neighborhood status (first generation) on their adult children’s neighborhood attainments (second generation). Focal metropolitan-area characteristics account for about a third of the intergenerational elasticity variation that exists across metropolitan areas. For black families, the effect of racial residential segregation on neighborhood income attainment operates almost entirely through the residential constraints placed on the first generation.

Author

• Jeremy Pais, University of Connecticut