Does suburban residence mean better neighborhood conditions for all households? Assessing the influence of nativity status and race/ethnicity

Suburban residence is considered symbolic of the American dream. Despite growth in suburban minority and immigrant populations, the question of whether access to high quality residential environments is available to all households has gone largely unexplored. This paper helps fill this gap by evaluating nativity-status and racial/ethnic differences in a range of neighborhood conditions for both suburban and central city residents. The study relies on data from the 2001 panel of the American Housing Survey and focuses on a range of neighborhood conditions, including indicators of social disorder, measures rarely examined in studies of locational attainment. Contrary to expectations based on spatial assimilation theory, we find that many foreign-born households reside in significantly better neighborhoods than their native-born counterparts. In addition, when nativity-status differences are in the favor of native-born households, suburban location does not necessarily attenuate them. With respect to the effect of race/ethnicity, we find that it is generally a more consistent predictor than nativity status of households’ neighborhood conditions.