Lewis Mumford Center Census 2000 Metropolitan Racial and Ethnic Change Series

Blacks’ Neighborhood Characteristics

Non-Hispanic black groups are residentially segregated from whites and from each other. Do they also live in neighborhoods of different quality? In this final section of the report, we analyze selected neighborhood characteristics for the average group member: the median household income of their neighborhood (in constant dollars for 1990 and 2000), the percent of households who own their homes, and percent of residents (over age 25) with a college education. These are characteristics of the neighborhoods in which an average group member lives, rather than of the groups themselves (these were shown previously in Table 4).

Table 8 shows that the non-Hispanic blacks, regardless of ethnicity, live in worse neighborhoods, on average, than do non-Hispanic whites, with one exception – Africans exceed whites in the educational attainment of their neighbors. More relevant for this report are the differences among black populations:

· Income – The average African American lives in a census tract with a median income of $35,679, while the average Afro-Caribbean lives in a census tract with a median income of $41,328. Africans live in more advantaged neighborhoods with a median income of $45,567 (though this is still more than $7,000 below the neighborhood median income of an average non-Hispanic white).

· Homeownership – The average African American lives in a tract where 53.1 percent of the residents own homes. This is higher than the other black groups, and to some extent it reflects the advantage of more generations of living in the U.S. The average Afro-Caribbean lives in a tract where 49.8 percent of the residents own homes. Although lower than the national average for African Americans, this deficit is largely due to their concentration in the New York metro area, where this group is mainly found in inner city neighborhoods. Regional comparisons of this neighborhood characteristic show that Afro-Caribbeans fare much better than African Americans in New York, and somewhat better in Washington, D.C. and Atlanta. The average African lives in a tract where 47.2 percent of neighbors are homeowners.

· Education – The average African in 2000 lives in a neighborhood where 29.3 percent of residents have a college education, compared to 29 percent for an average non-Hispanic white. This reflects the very high educational attainment of the Africans who have been able to immigrate to the U.S. By contrast the average African American lives in a neighborhood where 17.5 percent of residents have a college education, while 20 percent of an average Afro-Caribbean person’s neighbors have a college education.

Table 8. Neighborhood characteristics of the average group member, national metro averages
	Median Household Income		Percent Homeowners		Percent College Educated
	1990	2000	1990	2000	1990	2000
African Americans	$31,548	$35,679	49.8%	53.1%	14.0%	17.5%
Afro-Caribbeans	$39,970	$41,328	44.1%	49.8%	17.5%	20.3%
African-born	$44,715	$45,567	44.7%	47.2%	28.8%	29.3%

Non-Hispanic whites	$47,683	$52,637	67.6%	70.7%	23.8%	29.0%

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