The Ethno-Racial Divide in Neighborhood Crime Change: The Role of City Segregation and Immigration (2000-2013)

Abstract

Despite continuing crime declines in the early 2000s, the ethno-racial divide in neighborhood crime remains a durable feature of American city life. During this period, cities also transformed in drastic ways, two of which were through decreasing levels of Black/White (B/W) residential segregation and increasing immigration. City levels of immigration may interact with the continuing deleterious influence of B/W segregation to shape how different neighborhoods fare in this continuing crime decline and explain the disparate levels of crime decline evidenced across ethno-racial neighborhoods. With panel data (2000-2013) from the National Neighborhood Crime Study, I use fixed effects linear regressions to examine how changing city-level immigration and B/W segregation work together to shape neighborhood crime change for ethno-racial neighborhoods. My findings suggest that when in cities with increasing segregation and immigration, durably Black neighborhoods have smaller associated crime declines compared to all other ethno-racial neighborhoods. Additionally, durably Black neighborhoods only experience the crime reduction benefits of increasing immigration in cities when B/W residential segregation drastically declines.