Measures of Residential Segregation

Racial and Ethnic Residential Segregation in the United States: 1980-2000 119 Massey and Denton (1988) used an extensive literature search and cluster analysis to identify 20 different indexes of segregation and classify them into five key dimensions of segregation. Basically, evenness involves the differential distribution of the subject population, exposure measures potential contact, concentration refers to the relative amount of physical space occupied, centralization indicates the degree to which a group is located near the center of an urban area, and clustering measures the degree to which minority group members live disproportionately in contiguous areas. Below we describe the 19 measures we have calculated, though we focus on only one per dimension, as described in Chapter 2. In all of the calculations, nonHispanic Whites are considered the “majority” (reference) population. The formulas for the 19 indexes are listed at the end of this appendix.