Almost half of all Black Americans lived in a big city in 1970. That percentage has dropped to just 25% over the last five decades years, while the percentage of people who live in big city suburbs has increased from 16% to 36%. Economists Evan Mast of the University of Notre Dame and Alexander Bartik of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign claim that this demographic shift is as significant as the Great Migration wave that followed World War II.
Mast and Bartik believed that there had been surprisingly little recent research on this tendency, particularly in the field of economics, given its magnitude. Regarding his and his co-author’s work, Mast remarked, “This seemed like an area that no one had really examined with an economics lens before.”
“What we really wanted to know was whether suburbanization affected Black households’ neighborhood quality, schools, public services and intergenerational mobility,” the pair wrote.
Their upcoming study, which will be published in the journal The Review of Economics and Statistics, discovered that although Black population growth has been swift and extensive in a variety of suburban neighborhood types and locations, Black population has also sharply decreased in city neighborhoods that were initially lower-class and predominately Black. For instance, according to census data, areas with a majority-Black population that had a poverty rate higher than 20% in 1970 have since lost 40% of their overall population and 60% of their Black population.
“That really high concentration of Black families in those central cities has been unwinding since 1970 and we’re seeing people spread out to the suburbs—including to higher income suburban neighborhoods and more mixed race suburban neighborhoods,” said Mast, an Urban Economist who studies public finance, housing markets and place-based policies in Notre Dame’s Department of Economics.
When the researchers looked into the causes of this change, they discovered evidence that people and families have been lured to the suburbs by greater amenities, a higher standard of living, declining housing costs, and less prejudice. The study used a panel of census tract data from 1970 to 2016 to demonstrate that home costs explained 30% of Black suburbanization, while changes in relative suburban amenities accounted for 60%.
Household Income, Changing Trends & More
Rising income and educational levels, gentrification of Black city neighborhoods, and suburban decline all had less of an impact. Just 10% of suburbanization was caused by both increased educational attainment and regional reallocation.
“One outcome is that the suburbs look a little bit more diverse and are more representative of the country than they used to be,” Mast said.
However, the study also found that suburbanization contributes to income and household location differences among the Black community.
“We see a growing divergence in neighborhood quality of Black suburbanites and city dwellers—where conditions are improving in the suburbs while stagnating in the cities,” the co-authors noted.
A disparity in income has also been brought to light by suburbanization. Black suburban inhabitants’ median income increased somewhat from 61 to 66% of the average white person’s income, whereas Black city dwellers’ median income decreased from 58 to 50%. The economists contended that this division between Black households in cities and suburbs has been mostly caused by a shortage of affordable suburban housing as well as comparatively little white flight.
This present demographic transition is very different from the Great Migration, which saw Black families relocate from the rural South to the urban North between 1910 and 1970. The resulting white flight led to a decline in housing costs and an increase in racial segregation.
“We show that white flight is significantly lower in our context,” the co-authors wrote. “This reduces downward pressure on housing prices, preventing suburban neighborhoods from becoming affordable for lower-income Black households and helping to sustain income segregation.”
Taking a Closer Look at Generational Shifts
In similar fashion, the authors discovered significant disparities between the cost of living in the cities and suburbs over the course of their sample period, especially at the lower end of the price range, which probably made it simpler for Black households with greater resources to relocate to the suburbs than it was for households with less.
According to the co-authors, it’s not simply the first generation who grew up in the 1970s making these migration decisions and leaving. Black children in urban areas have experienced an especially sharp decline, with a 30% decline since 2000.
“Now it tends to be the young people who are settling down in the suburbs, rather than in the city where they might have grown up,” Mast said. “So the trend is also about the next generation making different decisions about where to start.”
The co-authors noted that significant population declines can raise policy issues since they can increase the likelihood of school closures, diminish retail or supermarket options, and risk tax revenue. The economists agreed that more research on Black suburbanization is warranted. They believe that the impact of suburbanization on Black people’s social and economic outcomes should be investigated.
Additionally, they believe that these changes may have political and economical ramifications. Understanding whether shifting racial makeup in suburban jurisdictions and electoral districts affects municipal finances and political representation, for instance, might be beneficial.
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