g., ranking of data) and a full-fledged statistical
analysis of the Census data require much more sophisticated
analysis than I can provide in the limits of this paper.Matej Cepl, matej at ceplovi dot cz
The goal of this article is to test a level of racial/ethnic segregation among the communities of the Boston area. I would like also estimate whether there is an association between racial/ethnic characteristics of different communities and their social, economical and crime situation.
In order to do this analysis, I had to estimate in the first part of the article a distribution of main racial/ethnic communities in the area. The next step in the analysis was to analyze small sample of the local indicators and assessing similarities in their distribution among different communities classified based on the racial/ethnic distribution of such communities.
I have intentionally used in this article very little
statistics, because in my opinion it is possible to create quite
informative and more reliable picture using less informal means of
descriptive statistics (e.g., ranking of data) and a full-fledged statistical
analysis of the Census data require much more sophisticated
analysis than I can provide in the limits of this paper.
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The area analyzed in this article is based on McArdle [2003]'s set of the ``central/high density cities'' limited to the central area of the Boston metropolitan area (see fig:map-Boston). I have added to the set the City of Brookline, in order to avoid selection on dependent variable, because although Brookline is highly affluent neighborhood, it is nevertheless both high-density, centrally located and urban (unless urban is understood as a euphemism for poor). I have also divided the area of the City of Boston itself into separate communities (according to The Boston Foundation [2002a]), because the City of Boston when analyzed as whole hides behind its size all its internal diversity.
I have also limited my analysis mostly to the Boston black community2 in order to make size of my data manageable, and because extraordinary position of the segregation of the black community [Massey and Denton, 1993] makes it legitimate to make its separate analysis. During the analysis I have ignored two communities, which were clear outliers in data: Harbor Islands (where are just some social institutions of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and no permanent inhabitants) and Fenway/Kenmore (where is even bigger share of students among the population than is common in the Boston area and results are always rather skewed).
The first step in the analysis was to identify parts of the
whole area where the representation of the different races/ethnics
is higher than average in the whole area. Data from U.S. Census 2000 MassGIS [2002] were arranged into the table
tab:race-rates. Total number of inhabitants total population in a
given community are shown in thousands and the column is calculated
from the Census variable P007001. Numbers for White, Black, and
Latino population are both in the absolute numbers in thousands
(variables P007003, P007004, and P007010) and in per cents as a
share of white, black (both non-Hispanic), and Hispanic population
on given community. Communities with greater share of black and
Hispanic population than the average in whole area
(15.97
% and 12.41%) are in bold
letters and underlined respectively. For clear presentation of the
results I have created also maps showing the spatial distribution
of the Black population in the tracts of analyzed area (see
fig:black-Boston) and the same map for the Hispanic population (see
fig:hisp-Boston).
Both the table and the map show very high level of segregation.
There is on the one hand a long curved area in the southeast of the
City of Boston between Hyde Park and Jamaica Plain, which contains
most of the black population (just Mattapan, Roxbury, and South
Dorchester contains 53.24% of the Black population in
whole analyzed area; blacks are 56.69% of the total
population of these communities). On the other hand area of the
north and west parts of the City of Boston (Beacon Hill, Central
community, and South Boston) seems to be disproportionately more
populated by white people. This contrast is most visible on the
line between the second most and the second least black
neighborhood in the City of Boston: Roxbury and South Boston.
Special cases in the city which doesn't seem to fit in the overall
city pattern are Charlestown and East Boston in the northern part
of the city and West Roxbury in the southern. The former seems to
belong more to the neighborhood of Cambridge and Somerville, and
the latter is according to Boston
Redevelopment Authority [2001] de facto part of
suburbs.
Comparison between the city of Boston and other communities in our area shows that whole city of Boston has much more minorities than rest of the analyzed area. All non-Bostonian communities in our sample have sub-average representation of the Black population and even the highest among these, Cambridge, has just slightly more than half of the average Bostonian share of the Black population (moreover, the map shows that only remarkable black community lives in the projects of the Northern Cambridge).
The situation is slightly different with the Hispanic community.
Although there is a similar pattern of local concentration of the
Hispanic population in the area of the East Boston, and Chelsea,
the level of segregation of Hispanic population is less severe than
in the case of the Black population. Eight communities in the area
have supra-average share of Latinos comparing to only six Black
ones and only 35.71% of all
Latino lives in the three communities with the highest proportion
of Hispanic population (East Boston, Chelsea, and Roxbury) and they
constitute only 35.26% of the
population in these communities. Moreover, although I cannot prove
it from my data (which are all from the same time period),
according to Massey and Denton [1993,
p. 77] the segregation of the Black communities is usually
more perpetual than segregation of other groups and newly
immigrated populations.
Standard measurement of the interracial/ethnic segregation is
according to Massey and Denton [1993,
p. 46] the index of residential dissimilarity (percentage
of the minority population which would have to move in order to
make racial/ethnic composition of the city even, i.e., that every unit of
the city will have the same proportion of the minorities as whole
city). Indices of residential dissimilarity for the analyzed area
is 51.72% for black population and
36.85% for Hispanic population
(just for the City of Boston the numbers are 48.66% and 34.50%). My numbers cannot be
unfortunately used to compare the residential segregation between
the communities with the data of Massey
and Denton [1993] (because their indices are based on
substantially less homogeneous wider base, they correctly show that
the true segregation in the Boston MPSA is substantially higher).
However, these my calculations further validate the conclusion,
that the segregation of the Hispanic population is less severe than
the Black one in absolute numbers.
My data does not cover any time period, so it is not possible for me to analyze any dynamical changes in the segregation. The similar data were analyzed by McArdle [2003] and she got very similar dissimilarity indices of the segregation in the City of Boston (see Figure 10 p. 23), but moreover she analyzed also dynamics of desegregation and found a pattern of change common for both Bostonian suburbs and the city, where a segregation of blacks although higher in absolute numbers is declining more rapidly than the segregation of both Latino and Asian population.
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After delimitation of the area of the black community itself and assessing the level of segregation in the area, we can continue in analyzing some of its social and economical characteristics.
Before proceeding with the analysis of the data, one note is necessary. I am very much aware of the fact that ``Association does not mean causation'' and so whatever are my conclusions about relations between racial/ethnic composition of communities and crime indicators, these associations should not be under any circumstances used as characterizing particular race or ethnic group as such.
I have used for the analysis data from the U.S. Census 2000
[MassGIS, 2002]: level of unemployment
(P043014 and P043007 for the male and female unemployment together
with P043001, total civilian workforce), per capita income in 1999
(P082001), poverty data (P087002 for number of people living under
the level of poverty and P087001 for total population for which the
poverty is calculated), and drop-out numbers (P037003 and P037020
for share of males and females in age 25 without completed
schooling, and P037001, which is total number of population in the
age 25). I have also added indicators of the violent crimes and the
property crimes (per 100,000 persons in population) from Bureau of Justice Statistics, DOJ [2002] and
The Boston Foundation [2002b]. The
Census values were calculated into rates for the individual
communities and then all data are presented as
tab:race-economics.
In order to make sense of the data in the table, I have created rankings of all communities according to the respective columns (indicated by the superscripted number) and then marked with boldface font all values, which were in the upper half of the ranking (summary data on the whole City of Boston were not ranked and distinguished by italic font). Because I want to analyze relation between these data and the racial characteristics of the individual communities, I have marked the ones which were identified in the previous section as predominantly Black by boldfacing their name in the first column and predominantly Hispanic by underlining it. For some variables Harbor Islands and Fenway are clear outliers and in such a case the value is stroke out in the table. Moreover, crime indicators are not available for Harbor Islands.
Looking at the data from a broader perspective, a very clear
pattern emerges: all communities marked as predominantly Black or
Hispanic tend to fall to the lower half or even to the bottom of
all rankings. Specifically the group of communities positioned in
the table between (and including) East Boston and Mattapan (which
are also geographically neighboring one another) create the bottom
of all rankings. And among these Roxbury (second ``most black''
community) stands out as the very worst case in per capita income,
poverty rate, and the second from the bottom in violent crime.
Another evidence of the association between racially/ethnically
segregated communities and poor living conditions is Chelsea which
is overwhelmingly Hispanic (48.35%)
and ranking at the bottom with the above-mentioned group and the
worst in drop-out rates and violent crime. Surprisingly it stands
slightly better in economic characteristics (especially the rate of
unemployment).
When we take a more detailed look we can find many exceptions from this pattern. One of them is caused by the huge student population in Boston (approximately 250,000) which skews especially the rates of unemployment (most notably Fenway, Cambridge, and Central), and of course drop-out rates (here it shows most with South Boston, the seat of the University of Massachusetts in Boston, which would be expected according to other indicators to stand much worse than it does). However, we have to be aware of the crudeness of the methodology and limitations of our data. The example of this is very poor position of Chelsea exactly in the drop-out rates. We cannot be sure whether this value of the drop-out variable can be explained only by the suggested influence of the low socioeconomical status of the Hispanic population, or other factors influences the drop-out rate as well. One such possible explanation is that education of Hispanic population born (and educated) outside of the United States is incompatible with the standard American education and thus unacknowledged in the Census. Another comment for the drop-out value is necessary--its range is so narrow, that the rough methodology of analysis could be affected discover possible errors.
There is couple of another exceptions to the general rule, that segregated communities suffer worse socioeconomic characteristics. When considering crime-related indicators, Fenway/Kenmore, Back Bay/Beacon Hill, and the Central community being apparently one of the most affluent by other measures stand out as three worst in terms of the property crime and in the lower half in terms of the violent crime (and the Central community the third worst just following Chelsea and Roxbury). The probable solution to this issue is twofold. First of all, crime does not follow the place of living (as other Census statistical variables do). Second, the magnitude of the difference between Back Bay and Central community, can be explained only by the fact that these communities contain most of the financial district, where certainly most of the property-related white-collar crimes happen.
Another important exception from the rule is Hyde Park. Although
it firmly stands in the minority part of Boston by its
racial/ethnic characteristics (and geographical location) with
39.07% and 13.50% share of the Black and
Hispanic population respectively and according to maps consistent
minority residency across the area, all its socio-economic
indicators except of one are in the upper half of the rank. Further
research would be probably necessary to prove it firmly, but it
seems that in this area we can find another level of segregation of
the already segregated community--this time the area of the Black
middle class separated from the rest of the Black community.
Another exceptional community is the South End, which has extraordinary high per capita income (fifth best), but ranks in the bottom of all other variables. I do not have a good explanation of this phenomenon available, aside from the problems with my too crude methodology or missing some data. One variable which should be probably investigated further is the share of foreign-born members of a community, which may explain this and some other irregularities.
Last group of remarkable communities is group in the southwest part of the City of Boston (Jamaica Plain, West Roxbury, and Roslindale), which in all its characteristics puts them outside of the Boston urban area more towards suburbs (Jamaica Plain has a divided nature, with a part falling into the Black community and other one to the semisuburban part of Boston).
There are two possible conclusions from my research. One is the
direction where the further research should follow. Of course, it
may be possible to add another dependent variables to the analysis
in order to better explain some surprising results (e.g., immigrant status).
Unfortunately, adding every new variable to the model, would make
descriptive method of the analysis even more inadequate and more
complicated statistical tools would have to be used. However, it is
not the most important objection I have against this step (of
course, there is no inherent problem in calculating more
complicated models). By creating the system more complicated in
order to get better 
I am
afraid to loose any possibility of getting understanding and
insight into mechanism which plays between community segregation
and socioeconomic characteristics. Given the highly intercorrelated
character of the most community indicators, it is probably not
possible to create unidirectional mathematical model predicting
socioeconomic indicators from any number of dependent variables
(like race of the community or the amount of governmental support
to underdeveloped communities). Therefore, I think that I would
rather keep the number of my variables very modest (maybe just add
one or two), but I would try to observe effects of the racial
segregation on the bigger number of unrelated communities in other
metropolitan areas. Another possible direction of the further
research may be further rethinking of what exactly means
segregation and what is the desired state of the community (is it
just zero dissimilarity index?). I have just assumed in this
article, that segregation is bad and less it is there better.
However, I am afraid that in the further research, so simple
theoretical assumption would not be sufficient.
Other conclusion of this articles is more practical. First of all, it is necessary to repeat, that the level of community segregation is still very high even after many years since it was officially outlawed. However, given my insufficient understanding of the desired direction of the inter-communal relations, I cannot suggest any exact policy proposal to follow. I just have to agree with conclusions of Massey and Denton [1993], that the discussion about the means for dealing with communal segregation is clearly insufficient and that most of the current attempts are both ineffective and hugely wasteful. I would also agree, that probably currently the best what we could do is to support small-scale efforts, voluntary organizations, indirectly support minority population through subsidies for rent and building outside of the minority communities, and certainly a vigorous fight against any hate-crimes or expressions of hate against any minority.
