Even as Greater Boston becomes more racially integrated, income segregation continues to worsen, new report finds
Related
:
In 2023, the Boston area's income segregation metric reached a high of 43 percent, meaning that that percent of Boston's low and high income households are living among others who share their income level. The percentage rose steadily from 1980, when the figure stood at 32 percent, to 2015, when the percentage reached 41 percent.
Then, from 2015 to 2020, the figure dropped 3 percentage points to 39 percent, before increasing again by 4 percentage points to 43 percent in 2023.
Advertisement
High-income households are driving income segregation by moving into the same neighborhoods, the researchers found. As a result, lower income households are clustering together, but not by choice.
The report found that since 2010, 29 percent of low-income households lived in neighborhoods where other residents are also low income, a percentage which has stayed fairly consistent. The percentage of high-income households living in among others who make the same income jumped from 7 to 15 percent in roughly the last 40 years.
Advertisement
Researchers point to a dearth of rental housing in some communities and the
'Communities that have almost no rental housing are, by definition, excluding low and moderate-income families who aren't able to afford the purchases of those homes, and because race and income are so intertwined, those housing policy decisions are one of the key reasons why we're so segregated,' said Luc Schuster, executive director of Boston Indicators and the report's co-author, who said income and racial segregation combine to form residential segregation.
Boston has become more racially diverse in recent decades, with an influx of immigrants bringing more Hispanic, Asian, and Black communities to the area.
This increase in diversity has led to more exposure, meaning that people of different groups are more likely to interact with one another, said Aja Kennedy, a research fellow at Boston Indicators and co-author of the report.
'This increase in exposure is driven a lot by diversity and not as much in different groups living in the same neighborhoods,' Kennedy said, meaning that while exposure has increased, neighborhoods themselves are not necessarily more likely to contain people of different groups. Instead, more diversity means people are more likely to interact with others belonging to different economic backgrounds.
In 2020, Boston rose to a diversity index of 52 percent, a strong positive change since 16 percent in 1980. The diversity index refers to 'how likely it is that two people selected at random belong to different groups.'
Advertisement
In the Boston metro area, as defined by the US Census Bureau, from 1980 to 2020, the white population has steadily decreased over the decades, from 92 percent of the overall population in 1980 down to 67 percent in 2020, according to Boston Indicators' analysis.
In that same timeframe, the Hispanic population had the largest growth, comprising just 2 percent of the area's population in 1980 to 12 percent in 2020. The Black population doubled in percentage, growing from 4 to 8 percent and the Asian population increased tenfold, from 1 to 10 percent in 40 years.
According to the US Census Bureau, the Boston metropolitan area includes Boston, Cambridge, Newton and, in New Hampshire, Rockingham and Stafford counties.
While the report was created as an educational tool, the authors hope that it can be used to further educate the population as well as policymakers on the importance of understanding how segregation impacts residents.
'I think one of the clearest policy avenues in addressing these issues is housing. Residential segregation is about where people live, and you can't choose to reside in a community that is not accessible to you,' said Schuster.
This
story
will be updated.
Katarina Schmeiszer can be reached at
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Chicago Tribune
8 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Today in History: Illinois senatorial contenders Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas debate
Today is Thursday, Aug. 21, the 233rd day of 2025. There are 132 days left in the year. Today in history: On Aug. 21, 1858, the first of seven debates took place between Illinois senatorial contenders Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. Also on this date: In 1831, Nat Turner launched a violent slave rebellion in Virginia, resulting in the deaths of at least 55 white people; scores of Black people were killed in retribution in the aftermath of the rebellion, and Turner was later executed. In 1911, Leonardo da Vinci's 'Mona Lisa' was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris. (It was recovered two years later in Italy.) In 1944, the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and China opened talks at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington that helped pave the way for establishment of the United Nations. In 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a proclamation officially declaring Hawaii the 50th state. In 1983, Filipino politician Benigno Aquino Jr. was assassinated as he exited an aircraft at Manila International Airport. (His widow, Corazon Aquino, would become president of the Philippines three years later.) In 1991, a hardline coup against Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev collapsed in the face of a popular uprising led by Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin. In 1992, an 11-day siege began at the cabin of white separatist Randy Weaver in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, as government agents tried to arrest Weaver for failing to appear in court on charges of selling two illegal sawed-off shotguns; on the first day of the siege, Weaver's teenage son, Samuel, and Deputy U.S. Marshal William Degan were killed. In 1993, in a serious setback for NASA, engineers lost contact with the Mars Observer spacecraft as it was about to reach the red planet on a $980 million mission. In 2000, rescue efforts to reach the sunken Russian nuclear submarine Kursk ended with divers announcing none of the 118 sailors had survived. In 2010, Iranian and Russian engineers began loading fuel into Iran's first nuclear power plant, which Moscow promised to safeguard to prevent material at the site from being used in any potential weapons production. In 2015, a trio of Americans, U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Spencer Stone, National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos and college student Anthony Sadler, and a British businessman, Chris Norman, tackled and disarmed a Moroccan gunman on a high-speed train between Amsterdam and Paris. In 2017, Americans witnessed their first full-blown coast-to-coast solar eclipse since World War I, with eclipse-watchers gathering along a path of totality extending 2,600 miles across the continent In 2018, Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer and fixer, pleaded guilty to campaign-finance violations and other charges; Cohen said Trump directed him to arrange the payment of hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal to fend off damage to his White House bid. (Trump was found guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to the payments in May 2024.) In 2020, a former police officer who became known as the Golden State Killer, Joseph James DeAngelo, told victims and family members in a Sacramento courtroom that he was 'truly sorry' before he was sentenced to multiple life prison sentences for a decade-long string of rapes and murders. Today's Birthdays: Rock and Roll Hall of Famer James Burton is 86. Singer Jackie DeShannon is 84. Film director Peter Weir is 81. Football Hall of Famer Willie Lanier is 80. Actor Loretta Devine is 76. Two-time Heisman Trophy winner Archie Griffin is 71. Actor Kim Cattrall is 69. Former NFL quarterback Jim McMahon is 66. Rock musician Serj Tankian (System of a Down) is 58. Actor Carrie-Anne Moss is 58. Google co-founder Sergei Brin is 52. Singer Kelis is 46. TV personality Brody Jenner is 42. Olympic gold medal sprinter Usain (yoo-SAYN') Bolt is 39. Country singer Kacey Musgraves is 37. Soccer player Robert Lewandowski is 37. Actor Hayden Panettiere is 36. Comedian-singer-filmmaker Bo Burnham is 35.
Los Angeles Times
a day ago
- Los Angeles Times
Enjoying this headline? You're a rarity: Reading for pleasure is declining, study says
Put down the book, pick up the phone. So it goes in the United States, where daily reading for pleasure has plummeted more than 40% among adults over the last two decades, according to a new study from the University of Florida and University College London. From 2003 to 2023, daily leisure reading declined at a steady rate of about 3% per year, according to the study published Wednesday in the journal iScience . 'This decline is concerning given earlier evidence for downward trends in reading for pleasure from the 1940s through to the start of our study in 2003, suggesting at least 80 years of continued decline in reading for pleasure,' the paper states. Jill Sonke, one of the study's authors, said in an interview Tuesday that the decline is concerning in part because 'we know that reading for pleasure, among other forms of arts participation, is a health behavior. It is associated with relaxation, well-being, mental health, quality of life.' 'We're losing a low-hanging fruit in our health toolkit when we're reading or participating in the arts less,' added Sonke, the director of research initiatives at the UF Center for Arts in Medicine and co-director of the university's EpiArts Lab. The reading decline comes as most Americans have more access to books than ever before. Because of Libby and other e-book apps, people do not need to travel to libraries or bookstores. They can check out books from multiple libraries and read them on their tablets or phones. But other forms of digital media are crowding out the free moments that people could devote to books. More time spent scrolling dank memes and reels on social media or bingeing the 'King of the Hill' reboot on Hulu means less time for the latest pick from Oprah's Book Club. But researchers say there are factors besides digital distraction at play, including a national decline in leisure time overall and uneven access to books and libraries. The study analyzed data from 236,270 Americans age 15 and older who completed the American Time Use Survey from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics between 2003 and 2023. [The year 2020 was excluded because data collection was briefly paused amid the COVID-19 pandemic.] Participants were asked to provide granular detail of their activities beginning at 4 a.m. on the day prior to the interview and ending at 4 a.m. the day of the interview. Researchers found that people who do read for pleasure are doing so for longer stretches of time — from 1 hour 23 minutes per day in 2003 to 1 hour 37 minutes per day in 2023. But the percentage of Americans who leisure-read on a typical day has dropped from a high of 28% in 2004 to a low of 16% in 2023. Researchers said there was an especially concerning disparity between Black and white Americans. The percentage of Black adults who read for pleasure peaked at about 20% in 2004 and fell to about 9% in 2023. The percentage of white adults who picked up a book for fun peaked at about 29% in 2004 and dropped to roughly 18% in 2023. The study showed that women read for fun more than men. And that people who live in rural areas had a slightly steeper drop in pleasure reading than urban denizens over the last two decades. In rural places, people have less access not only to bookstores and libraries, but also reliable internet connections, which can contribute to different reading habits, Kate Laughlin, executive director of the Seattle-based Assn. for Rural and Small Libraries, said in an interview Tuesday. Although there have been concerted national efforts to focus on literacy in children, less attention is paid to adults, especially in small towns, Laughlin said. 'When you say 'reading for pleasure,' you make the assumption that reading is pleasurable,' Laughlin said. 'If someone struggles with the act of actually reading and interpreting the words, that's not leisure; that feels like work.' As rural America shifts away from the extraction-based industries that once defined it — such as logging, coal mining and fishing — adults struggling with basic literacy are trying to play catch-up with the digital literacy needed in the modern workforce, Laughlin said. Rural librarians, she said, often see adults in their late 20s and older coming in not to read but to learn how to use a keyboard and mouse and set up their first email address so they can apply for work online. According to the study, the percentage of adults reading to children has not declined over the last two decades. But 'rates of engagement were surprisingly low, with only 2% of participants reading with children on the average day.' Of the participants whose data the researchers analyzed, 21% had a child under 9 at home. The low percentage of adults reading with kids 'is concerning given that regular reading during childhood is a strong determinant of reading ability and engagement later in life,' the study read. 'The low rates of reading with children may thus contribute to future declines in reading among adults.' Researchers noted some limitations in their ability to interpret the data from the American Time Use Survey. Some pleasure reading might have been categorized, mistakenly, as digital activity, they wrote. E-books were not included in the reading category until 2011, and audiobooks were not included until 2021. From 2003 to 2006, reading the Bible and other religious texts was included in reading in personal interest — but was recategorized afterward and grouped with other participation in religious practice. Further, reading on tablets, computers and smartphones was not explicitly included in examples, making it unclear whether survey participants included it as leisure reading or technology use. 'This may mean that we underestimated rates of total engagement, although … we expect any such misclassifications to have minimal effects on our findings,' they wrote.
Newsweek
a day ago
- Newsweek
Map Shows Best Public High Schools Across U.S.
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. The map below shows where the best high schools in the country are, according to the U.S. News & World Report's rankings. How Were The Schools Ranked? The rankings include data on more than 24,000 public high schools in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Almost 18,000 of those schools were ranked on six factors, including their performance on state-required tests and how well they prepare students for college. The graduation rate—the proportion of entering ninth-graders who graduated four academic years later—is also taken into account. Underserved student performance was also a factor, with scores on state assessments aggregated just among students who are Black, Hispanic and from low-income households compared with what is typical in the state for non-underserved students, with parity for higher being the goal. Which Are The Best U.S. High Schools? 1. BASIS Tucson North in Tucson, Arizona BASIS Tucson North scored 100 out of a possible 100. The charter school serves fifth- through 12th-graders, and there are 226 students enrolled in grades nine through 12. Students at the school are required to start taking Advanced Placement classes and exams in ninth grade. 2. Signature School in Evansville, Indiana Signature School scored 99.99. The school offers Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses, and all students are also expected to complete a minimum number of community service hours. There are 378 students in grades nine through 12 and total minority enrollment is 38 percent. Some 9 percent of students are economically disadvantaged. 3. Central Magnet School in Murfreesboro, Tennessee Central Magnet School scored 99.98. The school, ranked first in Tennessee, offers Advanced Placement coursework and exams and the participation rate is 100 percent. The school has 784 students enrolled in grades nine through 12, and 26 percent minority enrollment. 4. Davidson Academy in Reno, Nevada Davidson Academy also scored 99.98. The school, ranked first within Nevada, also offers Advanced Placement coursework and exams with 100 percent of students participating. The school has 121 students in grades nine through 12, with 72 percent minority enrollment. 5. Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology scored 99.97. The school uses a STEM-focused curriculum, offering courses such as DNA science, advanced marine biology and automation and robotics. There are 2,015 students in grades nine through 12, and a majority of students (63.3 percent) are Asian. About 13 percent of students are economically disadvantaged. 6. Albuquerque Institute of Math and Science in Albuquerque, New Mexico Albuquerque Institute of Math and Science scored 99.97. The school, ranked first in New Mexico, offers Advanced Placement coursework and exams, and has a 100 percent participation rate. The school has 145 students in grades nine through 12, and the total minority enrollment is 74 percent. About 3 percent of students are economically disadvantaged. A stock photo shows an empty classroom. A stock photo shows an empty classroom. iStock 7. Haas Hall Bentonville in Bentonville, Arkansas Haas Hall Bentonville scored 99.96. The school, ranked first in Arkansas, offers Advanced Placement coursework and exams, and has a 100 percent participation rate. It has 282 students enrolled in grades nine through 12, and the total minority enrollment is 53 percent. About 2 percent of students are economically disadvantaged. 8. Julia R. Masterman Secondary School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Julia R. Masterman Secondary School scored 99.96. The school offers Advanced Placement coursework and exams, and the participation rate is 99 percent. The school has 465 students enrolled in grades nine through 12. The total minority enrollment is 60 percent and 100 percent of students are economically disadvantaged. 9. The School for the Talented and Gifted in Dallas, Texas The School for the Talented and Gifted scored 99.95. The school offers 30 Advanced Placement courses and students are required to take 12 to graduate. There are 546 students enrolled in grades nine through 12. The total minority enrollment is 66 percent, and 41 percent of students are economically disadvantaged. 10. Aiken Scholars Academy in Aiken, South Carolina Aiken Scholars Academy scored 99.94. The school offers Advanced Placement coursework and exams, and the participation rate is 100 percent. The school has 179 students in grades nine through 12. The total minority enrollment is 34 percent and 31 percent of students are economically disadvantaged. The full list can be viewed on the U.S. News & World Report's website.
