Achieving the Middle Ground in an Age of Concentrated Extremes: Mixed Middle-Income Neighborhoods and Emerging Adulthood

Abstract

This paper focuses on stability and change in “mixed middle-income” neighborhoods. We first analyze variation across nearly two decades for all neighborhoods in the U.S. and the Chicago area. We then analyze a new longitudinal study of almost 700 Chicago adolescents over an 18-year span, including their neighborhood income experiences during the transition to young adulthood. The concentration of income extremes is highly persistent among neighborhoods, whereas mixed middle-income neighborhoods are more fluid. Persistence dominates among individuals too, although Latino-Americans are much more likely than African-Americans or whites to be exposed to mixed middle-income neighborhoods in the first place and to transition into them over time, adjusting for immigrant status, education, income, and residential mobility. The results enhance our knowledge of the course of income inequality at the neighborhood level, and the endurance of concentrated extremes suggests that policies seeking to promote mixed-income neighborhoods face greater odds than commonly thought.