Race and Class in Neighborhood Mobility: A Conditional Logit Model of Neighborhood Migration

Lincoln Quillian, Northwestern University

A basic question in understanding the causes of racial residential segregation is the extent to which race drives residential relocation decisions in contrast to correlated but non-racial factors, like neighborhood income level and housing costs. Analysis of panel data on residential mobility among neighborhoods presents a promising approach to this issue, but existing data has been only incompletely used for this purpose because the statistical models used for mobility analyses can only characterize destination neighborhoods by a single characteristic (e.g. percentage black). We use a conditional logit model to analyze residential neighborhoods of destination, an approach that allows us to simultaneously assess the relative importance of multiple destination neighborhood characteristics on residential relocation. We use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, 1986-1994. Preliminary results indicate powerful effects of racial composition on residential choice that are not significantly weakened after controlling for neighborhood economic level and housing prices.