A silver lining to white flight? White suburbanization and African–American homeownership, 1940–1980

0094-1190/$ see front matter 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jue.2013.08.001 ⇑ Corresponding author at: UCLA, Department of Economics, 8283 Bunche Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1477, United States. E-mail address: [email protected] (L.P. Boustan). 1 In 1960, 79 percent of suburban housing units were detached, single-family dwellings. Over 80 percent of single-family dwellings were owner-occupied in that year, compared with fewer than 20 percent of multi-family dwellings (see Table 2 for more detail on the relationship between structure and tenancy type). In recent decades occupancy rates in multi-family dwellings have risen because of the spread of condominium ownership. There were essentially no condominiums in the United States prior to 1960 and the ownership form had only begun to diffuse by the 1970s (Lasner, 2012). 2 In a shift-share analysis, the direct effect for whites of the shift to the s equal to the owner-occupancy rate of whites living in the suburban ring (0.522, see Table 1) multiplied by the increase in percent suburban between 1940 (0.355). The product is 0.171, which accounts for 59 percent of th increase in white owner-occupancy (= 0.171/0.288 100 percent). 3 For blacks, the effect of the increase in owner-occupancy rates in the ce in the shift-share analysis is the share living in central cities in 1980 multiplied by the change in black owner-occupancy rate in central cities 1940 and 1980 (0.271). The product is 0.196, which accounts for 73 perce overall rise in black metropolitan owner-occupancy (= 0.196/0.270 100 pe the same calculation is performed for the 1940 to 1960 period, the product which accounts for 80 percent of the overall rise in the black metropolitan occupancy. Beginning in the 1970s, African-Americans started to suburbaniz that accelerated after 1980. As Table 1 shows, the overall rate of black occupancy was approximately constant between 1980 and 2010 but withi cities or the suburbs, owner-occupancy was lower in 2010 than in 1 constancy of the overall rate can be attributed entirely, therefore, suburbanization after 1980. Leah P. Boustan a,b,⇑, Robert A. Margo b,c