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Immigrants in the United States often live, at least for a time, in neighbourhoods that
have high concentrations of fellow immigrants. Typically, these neighbourhoods also have
high poverty levels and are located near concentrations of the native-born poor.
Conventional wisdom is that living in extremely poor neighbourhoods leads to
‘concentration effects’ that exacerbate the problems of poverty and limit economic
opportunity. While immigrants are not immune to the problems of crime, gangs,
dilapidated housing and failing schools associated with high-poverty neighbourhoods, it
has been argued that immigrant neighbourhoods provide advantages as well. These
include the creation of parallel institutions, vernacular information networks and
familiar cultural practices. The analyses presented here provide some support for this
notion, by showing immigrants’ progress from higher- to lower-poverty neighbourhoods
over time. Yet Mexican immigrants do not transition nearly as rapidly, providing support
for the segmented assimilation hypothesis.
Introduction
Racial and ethnic groups experience very different levels of neighbourhood socio-
economic disadvantage. A poor black person is over four times more likely to live in
an extremely poor neighbourhood than a poor person who is a non-Hispanic white.
The Hispanic poor are also much more likely than the white poor to live in high-
poverty neighbourhoods. Research on black ghettos would seem to demonstrate that
living in extremely poor neighbourhoods leads to poverty-enhancing ‘concentration
Paul Jargowsky is Professor of Public Policy at the University of Texas at Dallas. Correspondence to: Prof. P.A.
Jargowsky, School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, 800 W. Campbell Rd,
Richardson, Texas 75080-3021, USA. E-mail: jargo@utdallas.edu
For so many different groups to have followed this practice for over a century
suggests that there are positive values to be derived from such concentration. For
the immigrants such voluntary segregation meant that they could reduce the rate of
transition from their native culture to the urban American way of life and thus
minimize ‘culture shock’. Immigrants established their own church with services in
their own languages, developed their own native-language newspapers, and
established their own clubs and mutual-aid societies. If the immigrant faced
difficulties, it was with the support of the centuries-old culture and traditions that
he and his neighbors had carried to the new American urban environment.
term? Fourth, do all immigrant groups achieve similar levels of spatial assimilation or
does segmented assimilation also extend to neighbourhood economic assimilation?
In In In Group
high-poverty % in high-poverty % in high-poverty % in poverty
Total areas high-poverty Total areas high-poverty Total areas high-poverty rate %
United States 281,422 7,952 2.8 33,900 3,487 10.3 239,982 3,712 1.5 12.4
Race/ethnicity
Non-Hispanic white 194,514 1,914 1.0 15,414 639 4.1 174,372 800 0.5 8.1
Black 34,362 3,173 9.2 8,146 1,512 18.6 24,568 1,498 6.1 24.9
Native American 2,448 239 9.7 608 118 19.4 1,760 114 6.5 25.7
Asian 10,172 275 2.7 1,322 129 9.8 9,023 120 1.3 12.8
Hispanic 35,238 2,301 6.5 7,798 1,074 13.8 26,653 1,162 4.4 22.6
Foreign-born Foreign-born
1137
1138 P.A. Jargowsky
and slums declined by 2.4 million persons (23.5 per cent) between 1990 and 2000,
falling from 10.4 million to 8.0 million. However, the decline would have been even
larger had not new immigrants taken the place of persons who resided in such
neighbourhoods in 1990. Nearly 629,000 residents of high-poverty neighbourhoods in
2000 were new immigrants who arrived in the United States during the 1990s. There
were 2.7 million fewer native-born persons living in high-poverty neighbourhoods in
2000 than in 1990 and 400,000 fewer foreign-born persons who arrived prior to 1990.
Other things being equal, without new immigrants, the total decline in population of
these high-poverty neighbourhoods would have been 3.1 million (30 per cent).
While the majority of metropolitan areas experienced declines, there were a
number that experienced increases in the number of residents of high-poverty ghettos
and barrios. Figure 4 shows the demographic source of these increases for the
metropolitan areas with the largest rise in high-poverty neighbourhood population.
Los Angeles had the largest increase by far*nearly 300,000 persons*both native-
born poor residing in high-poverty neighbourhoods and newly arriving immigrants.
The number of immigrants from prior cohorts living in high-poverty areas also
increased, but constituted a much smaller share of the total increase.
Six of the top ten metropolitan areas in terms of the size of the increase in high-
poverty neighbourhood population are located in California. In each of these, the
increase is composed of a combination of native-born and new immigrants, with a
much smaller role or even a decrease in the number of immigrants from earlier
cohorts, i.e. before 1990. In contrast, in the Washington DC metropolitan area, new
immigrants do not drive the increase in the high-poverty population. In McAllen,
TX, a metropolitan area close to the US/Mexico border, almost all the increase is in
new immigrants, partially offset by a decline in prior immigrants*the pattern that is
the most consistent with the idea of Latino barrios as gateway communities.
While many of the metropolitan areas with large increases in high-poverty
neighbourhood populations were destinations for immigrants, not all metropolitan
areas with a high flow of immigrants experienced an increase in the concentration of
poverty. Figure 5 shows the components of the change in the population of high-
poverty areas for the metropolitan areas with the largest overall influx of immigrants
between 1990 and 2000. New York, for example, had more than 100,000 new
immigrants who lived in high-poverty areas in 2000, partially offsetting a decline of a
Los Angeles, CA
Fresno, CA
Riverside, CA
Wash., DC/MD/VA/WV
Bakersfield, CA
San Diego, CA
McAllen, TX
Providence, RI/MA
Chico, CA
Middlesex, NJ
1990s immigrants
Prior immigrants
Native-born
New York, NY
Los Angeles, CA
Chicago, IL
Miami, FL
Houston, TX
Wash., DC/MD/VA/WV
Orange County, CA
Dallas, TX
San Jose, CA
Atlanta, GA
similar number of native-born persons and prior immigrants. While Chicago, Miami,
Houston and Washington DC all had many new immigrants, few of them settled in
high-poverty neighbourhoods.
The prior discussion oversimplifies the analysis to a certain degree because the
trends in the high-poverty residence of foreign-born and native-born persons may
not be independent. For example, if a neighbourhood has a poverty rate of 30 per
cent among the native-born, and then a sufficient number of poor immigrants
entered the neighbourhood, the average poverty rate of the neighbourhood could
be driven above the 40 per cent threshold. In that case, all the residents of the
neighbourhood, regardless of immigration status, would be added to the count of the
high-poverty neighbourhood population.
In fact, the reality is more complex. Nationally, the census-tract-level correlation
between the native-born and foreign-born poverty rates is a surprisingly low 0.495.
Immigrants with incomes above the poverty level actually tend to reduce poverty in
neighbourhoods with high native-born poverty rates. Table 3 addresses this issue by
showing the count of high-poverty census tracts and the population residing in them
when neighbourhoods are classified by the overall poverty rate, the poverty rate for the
native-born only, and the poverty rate for the foreign-born only. As might be expected,
more than twice as many census tracts are above the 40 per cent threshold based on the
foreign-born poverty rate compared to the overall poverty rate (5,489 compared to
2,510). However, it is also true that there are more census tracts above the 40 per cent
threshold using the native-born poverty rate (2,663 compared to 2,510). When
neighbourhoods are classified by the native-born poverty rate, 8.5 million persons
reside in high-poverty areas compared to 8.0 million using the overall poverty rate.
Therefore, immigrant settlement patterns actually attenuate the concentration of
poverty. In the 2,663 census tracts where the native-born poverty rate is above 40 per
cent, more than half have foreign-born poverty rates below 40 per cent and in 280
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 1141
Table 3. Concentration of poverty under alternative poverty rates
High-poverty areas defined by poverty rate:
United States
Census tracts 2,510 2,663 5,489
Population
Non-Hispanic 7,952,260 8,456,013 20,342,696
White 1,913,547 1,900,511 11,460,925
Black 3,091,805 3,313,409 4,502,871
Hispanic 2,301,296 2,565,303 3,331,459
Los Angeles
Census tracts 137 189 116
Population
Non-Hispanic 559,574 793,846 463,443
White 35,472 46,261 37,678
Black 95,868 122,983 88,118
Hispanic 378,471 550,768 292,870
New York
Census tracts 253 322 138
Population
Non-Hispanic 944,865 1,246,530 482,823
White 89,093 116,946 47,302
Black 346,661 450,755 186,766
Hispanic 463,878 615,589 222,459
tracts the lower poverty of the foreign-born is sufficient to bring the overall poverty
level below 40 per cent. While 127 census tracts are also pushed above the 40 per cent
threshold by poverty among immigrants, the former effect is more pronounced. An
even more dramatic pattern is observed in Los Angeles and New York, where there are
substantially more census tracts that would be classified as high-poverty neighbour-
hoods by the native-born poverty rate than by either the overall or the foreign-born
poverty rate.
In summary, immigrants did contribute to the increasing population of high-
poverty neighbourhoods in metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles. Moreover, in
metropolitan areas like New York and Chicago, immigrants offset declines in the
population of high-poverty areas due to the out-migration of the native-born and
earlier waves of immigrants. However, the immigrant poor also settle in a less-
concentrated pattern than the native-born poor and actually reduce the measured
level of the concentration of poverty.
Period of Arrival
The 1990 and 2000 Censuses both identify foreign-born persons by year of entry into
the United States, although the years are grouped differently, with more detail given
in 1990. Redstone and Massey (2004) have shown that census respondents often
interpret this question in different ways, especially in the context of multiple visits to
the US and returns to their native country. Nevertheless, they also show that errors
occur in both directions and analyses based on year of entry do not show a particular
bias in one direction or the other due to mis-reporting. The 1990 table gives more
detail before 1970, whereas the 2000 table has only one category for all immigrants
who entered before 1970. Nevertheless, three comparable cohorts of immigrants can
be constructed, allowing a weak form of longitudinal analysis: before 1970, 197079
and 198089.
Table 5 combines information from both sources and shows the number of
foreign-born persons by their year of entry into the United States and the proportion
residing in extremely poor neighbourhoods in 1990 and 2000. The table reveals a
wealth of information with just a few numbers. First, 5.3 per cent of all immigrants
lived in the highest-poverty neighbourhoods in 1990. Consistent with the national
trend in the 1990s, the proportion of immigrants living in concentrated poverty areas
declined to 4.1 per cent in 2000 (a 23 per cent decline in the proportion residing in
such neighbourhoods).
Looking down the 1990 column, we compare the residence in high-poverty
neighbourhoods by year of entry. We see a clear pattern of assimilation looking across
the cohorts. Fewer than 3 per cent of pre-1960 immigrants lived in high-poverty
zones in 1990, and more recent immigrants are consistently more likely to have lived
in high-poverty areas in 1990. The most recent group at the time of the 1990 census,
those who arrived from 1980 to 1989, lived in high-poverty areas 6.8 per cent of the
time. A similar pattern is observed as one reads down the year 2000 column.
Figure 6 shows the proportions living in concentrated poverty areas in 2000 for the
different arrival cohorts for 12 metropolitan areas. Regardless of year of entry,
immigrants are far more concentrated in some metropolitan areas*such as McAllen
TX and Fresno CA*than in other cities. These differences are probably driven by
differences in the country of origin of the immigrants in that area and by local
differences in housing markets. Despite very different levels across the cities, within
any given city, it is usually true that the longer a person has been in the United States,
the less likely he or she is to live in a high-poverty neighbourhood.
On the other hand, immigrants who arrived at different times might have differed
from each other prior to arrival. To rule out this possibility, we have to follow a given
cohort of immigrants (defined by year of entry) over time. Three comparable cohorts
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 1145
Table 5. Residence in high-poverty neighbourhoods by entry cohort, 19992000
1990 census 2000 census 19902000
are shown in bold in the central panel reading across the rows of Table 5. For
example, the table shows that 6.2 million immigrants arrived before 1970. In 1990,
members of this cohort resided in high-poverty neighbourhoods 3.1 per cent of the
0 .2 .4 .6 0 .2 .4 .6 0 .2 .4 .6 0 .2 .4 .6
Figure 6. Concentration of poverty among immigrants, by year of entry: cities with more
than 100,000 immigrants, 2000. Graphs by Metropolitan Area (MSA/PMSA)
1146 P.A. Jargowsky
time, but this figure had declined by nearly a third by 2000. Note that the 2000 census
only registers 4.8 million persons as having arrived in the US before 1970. The major
decline in the size of this cohort probably reflects mortality; those who immigrated
before 1950 would have been 70 years old by 2000 if they were 20 years old on arrival.
Some may therefore have returned to their country of origin, perhaps to retire.
The next cohort are those who arrived in the 1970s. Of this group, 5.4 per cent
resided in high-poverty neighbourhoods in 1990, falling about a third to 3.5 per cent
by 2000. Of those immigrating in the 1980s, the high-poverty neighbourhood
percentage dropped by a third from 6.8 in 1990 to 4.6 in 2000. The size of the more
recent cohorts drops only slightly; presumably, mortality is a much smaller factor for
the more recent immigrants.
There is some evidence in Table 5 supporting the assimilation of immigrants who
initially live in high-poverty zones, but also some evidence against it. On the positive
side, we see that, at a given point in time, more recent cohorts are less likely to live in
neighbourhoods of concentrated poverty. We also see that a given cohort is less likely
to live in such a neighbourhood over time. Both considerations support a conclusion
that residence in high-poverty neighbourhoods is a transitory phenomenon and that
immigrants assimilate geographically to neighbourhoods of lower poverty levels
despite initial high-poverty neighbourhood residence.
On the other hand, the concentration of poverty was declining for all groups
between 1990 and 2000, regardless of immigration status, so we also need to take into
account period effects. We can do this, for example, by comparing along diagonals:
the newest immigrants in 1990 (those who arrived in the 1980s) compared to the
newest immigrants in 2000 (those who arrived in the 1990s). There is a comparable
reduction in the tendency to reside in high-poverty neighbourhoods, dropping from
6.8 per cent for the 1980s cohort in 1990 to 4.8 per cent for the 1990s cohort in 2000,
a 29 per cent reduction. However, comparing the 1970s cohort in 1990 to the 1980s
cohort in 2000 shows a 15 per cent reduction. The existence of such a strong period
effect somewhat calls into question the evidence of assimilation derived from
following individual cohorts from 1990 to 2000.
Region of Origin
The evidence above aggregated foreign-born persons from all nations of origin. Yet
immigrants from different continents and nations bring vastly different amounts of
personal and cultural capital with them. They have to go through different processes
and filters to gain entry, and are treated differently once they arrive (Portes and
Rumbaut 2001). Perlmann argues that national origin is crucial to understanding the
‘networks, niches, modes of incorporation, historical context, and the like’ that affect
the assimilation of different immigrants groups (2005: 8).
Figure 7 shows the average neighbourhood poverty rate in 2000 of immigrants
from seven broad regions of origin and three periods of arrival in the United States.
European immigrants lived in the least-poor neighbourhoods, and Mexicans in the
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 1147
25.0%
20.0%
Before 1980
15.0%
1980 – 89
10.0%
1990 – 2000
5.0%
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Figure 7. Average neighbourhood poverty rate in 2000, by region of origin and period of
immigration
poorest. All immigrant groups except Mexicans showed a pattern that could be
considered as spatial assimilation: the immigrants from earlier periods live in
progressively less-poor neighbourhoods. The trend is even more dramatic for the
proportion who lived in concentrated poverty neighbourhoods, as shown in Figure 8.
In fact, a higher proportion of recent Caribbean immigrants lived in the poorest
neighbourhoods, but the rate is much lower for Caribbean immigrants who have
been around longer. In contrast, Mexican immigrants had about the same probability
of high-poverty neighbourhood residence, and the same average neighbourhood
poverty rate, regardless of period of entry.
9.0%
8.0%
7.0%
6.0% Before 1980
5.0%
1980–89
4.0%
3.0% 1990–2000
2.0%
1.0%
0.0%
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transition to the new society. The analyses presented here provide some support for
this notion overall, by showing that many immigrant groups move from higher- to
lower-poverty neighbourhoods over time.
At the same time, Mexican immigrants do not appear to experience neighbour-
hood socio-economic assimilation, at least not at the same rate as immigrants from
other countries and regions of origin. The strong suggestion is that the concentration
of poverty among certain immigrant groups, particularly those who arrive with low
levels of human capital, can have the same types of negative consequence as have long
been noted in the neighbourhoods of the native-born poor. Much more research is
needed on the neighbourhood effects in immigrant communities, particularly on the
mechanisms that seem to protect some immigrant groups while leaving others
vulnerable. Another question with important policy implications is the extent to
which the children of immigrants are affected when they reside with their parents in
high-poverty immigrant enclaves. A full appreciation of the consequences of the
concentration of poverty among immigrants and the implications of those effects for
economic and social assimilation will require an understanding of the effects of poor
neighbourhoods on the second and subsequent generations.
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this paper was presented at ‘Local Contexts and the Prospects for
the Second Generation’, in Seattle, Washington, 20 October 2006. The West Coast
Poverty Center supported and encouraged this research. Helpful comments and
suggestions have been provided by Gunnar Almgren, Kurt Beron, Shauna Carlisle,
Marie Chevrier, Kyle Crowder, Mark Ellis, Magnus Lofstrom, Robert Plotnick,
Alejandro Portes, Hilary Silver and a JEMS referee.
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