Income Divide and Race/Ethnicity in Tennessee Metropolises

Tennessee, like other Southeastern states, has also gained in its share of racial/ethnic diversity, but it also contains some of the most segregated and poorest (e.g., Memphis) metropolises in the southeast. This paper examines one dimension of inequality – the income divide – measured here by the 95/20 Ratio. Important questions include: How does income divide vary across the major racial/ethnic groups in Tennessee’s ten metropolises? How do they associate with diversity, segregation, and other geographic predictors? By using simple ranking and correlations analyses to explore these relationships, I find that metropolises that are large, diverse and mostly segregated, with higher African American poverty, highly educated, and mixed-economy are also the most income divided. In contrast, the smaller, mid-diverse metropolises with mixed-economic structure are less divided. Knoxville and Clarksville, the 3rd and 6th largest metropolises in Tennessee, rank as the most and the least income divided for African Americans respectively.