Black and white homebuyer, homeowner, and household segregation in the United States, 1990-2010.

As homeownership has been expanding in the United States over the past several decades, residential segregation between blacks and whites has been declining in most metropolitan areas. However, the degree to which the residential patterns of new homebuyers have mirrored these overall trends in segregation and how the massive increase in home buying has related to changes in segregation has remained largely unexplored. This paper examines the segregation of new black homebuyers from white households, new white homebuyers from black households, and black and white households from each other using Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data from 1992 to 2010 merged with data from the Census and ACS. I find that black homebuyers are less segregated from white households than black homeowners overall and black households in general, providing evidence in support of the spatial assimilation model that would predict better outcomes for homeowners. Also consistent with the spatial assimilation perspective, I found in the multivariate models that increased income parity between blacks and whites and growth in black lending are associated with average declines in black/white household segregation from 1990 to 2010. Although subprime lending was not associated with overall changes in segregation, metropolitan areas with higher percentages of loans to blacks from subprime lenders experienced increases in segregation of both black homeowners from white households as well as white owners from black households.

International Migration and Gender in Latin America: A Comparative Analysis.

We review census data to assess the standing of five Latin American nations on a gender continuum ranging from patriarchal to matrifocal. We show that Mexico and Costa Rica lie close to one another with a highly patriarchal system of gender relations whereas Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic are similar in having a matrifocal system. Puerto Rico occupies a middle position, blending characteristics of both systems. These differences yield different patterns of female relative to male migration. Female householders in the two patriarchal settings displayed low rates of out-migration compared with males, whereas in the two matrifocal countries the ratio of female to male migration was much higher, in some case exceeding their male counterparts. Multivariate analyses showed that in patriarchal societies, a formal or informal union with a male dramatically lowers the odds of female out-migration, whereas in matrifocal societies marriage and cohabitation have no real effect. The most important determinants of female migration from patriarchal settings are the migrant status of the husband or partner, having relatives in the United States, and the possession of legal documents. In matrifocal settings, however, female migration is less related to the possession of documents, partner's migrant status, or having relatives in the United States and more strongly related to the woman's own migratory experience. Whereas the process of cumulative causation appears to be driven largely by men in patriarchal societies, it is women who dominate the process in matrifocal settings.