The divide between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ is not just a matter of bank accounts. More and more it determines where you live. We’ve all heard about racial segregation. Whites live one place. Blacks live in another. There are all kinds of ethnic neighborhoods. But in the last 40 years, racial-ethnic segregation has moderated somewhat- although it is still high. But socioeconomic segregation, segregation by class, is on the rise.
“Well, the biggest change is, of course, the shift in the income distribution. We’ve become a much more unequal society in the past three decades."
Douglas Massey is a Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton. He was the lead author of a study about this trend toward class segregation which was published in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. He says in the past few years, you can really see the shift as people lose their homes to foreclosure and have to move.
“As fewer and fewer people are in the middle and more and more people are in the extremes, housing markets tend to produce higher levels of social class segregation, higher levels of segregation on the basis of income.”
Some people are moving on up and others are moving to the wrong side of the tracks.
In some areas, it gets to the point that teachers, sales clerks, baristas, the guy who puts tires on those nice cars can’t afford to live in the towns where they work. They live in less affluent communities and have to commute to work which adds to their financial burden.
So how did we get to this greater divide between classes? It started with racial segregation.
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