Moving Toward Integration
Richard Sander, Yana Kucheva, and Jonathan Zasloff
Reducing residential segregation is the best way to reduceracial inequality in the United States. African American employment rates,earnings, test scores, even longevity all improve sharply as residentialintegration increases. Yet far too many participants in our policy andpolitical conversations have come to believe that the battle to integrateAmerica’s cities cannot be won. Richard Sander, Yana Kucheva, and JonathanZasloff write that the pessimism surrounding desegregation in housing arisesfrom an inadequate understanding of how segregation has evolved and how policyinterventions have already set many metropolitan areas on the path tointegration.
Scholarshave debated for decades whether America’s fair housing laws are effective.Moving toward Integration provides the most definitive account to date of howthose laws were shaped and implemented and why they had a much larger impact insome parts of the country than others. It uses fresh evidence and betteranalytic tools to show when factors like exclusionary zoning and incomedifferences between blacks and whites pose substantial obstacles to broadintegration, and when they do not.
Throughits interdisciplinary approach and use of rich new data sources, Moving towardIntegration offers the first comprehensive analysis of American housingsegregation. It explains why racial segregation has been resilient even in anincreasingly diverse and tolerant society, and it demonstrates how publicpolicy can align with demographic trends to achieve broad housing integrationwithin a generation.
