Residential segregation by socioeconomic class in metropolitan Miami: 1990

This paper investigates the proposition that socioeconomic status explains a significant amount of the residential segregation between Hispanics, non-Hispanic Whites, non-Hispanic Blacks, and non-Hispanic others (mainly Asians) in metropolitan Miami. First, we test to determine if there is significant segregation within each of the four ethnic groups and we find that there is, except for Blacks. Although the index of dissimilarity suggests that there is segregation by socioeconomic status within Miami's Black population, map analysis reveals that this is not the case. Furthermore, we find that socioeconomic status is not an important factor explaining metropolitan Miami's segregation patterns between these four ethnic groups. When it comes to residential segregation, Miami is similar to most other American cities. This is a significant finding because several recent studies have suggested that standard assimilation theory does not apply to Miami, and segregation is one aspect of assimilation.