Race, Class, and Neighborhood: Differences in the Residential Return on Individual Resources

Using individual-level data from the neighborhood files of the 1970 Public Use Sample, the components of individual socioeconomic status (SES)—education, occupation, and income—are treated as resources; and racial differences in the return on these resources, differences in neighborhood residential quality, are estimated, decomposed, and subjected to component analysis. It is documented that blacks receive a lesser return than whites; they reside in inferior neighborhoods despite similar resources. The notion is tested and supported that one mechanism explaining the lesser return is that blacks are channeled into predominantly black neighborhoods and are thus less able than whites to achieve class segregation. Channeling has a greater impact on economic factors than on social factors; on the latter, intraracial segregation seems more possible. As a final note, given the theoretical importance of community and neighborhood contexts, and the general assumption in stratification theory that individual status (or parental status) is an adequate proxy for such context, a reexamination of studies of racial differences previously presumed to be net of class is suggested.