The Impact of Housing Segregation on Economic Factors within United States’ Cities

Roadblocks continue to mount for cities facing issues in terms of budgeting, resource planning, and revenue generation. As urban areas look to find new ways to solve their most pressing economic problems, would addressing housing segregation in a city result in economic improvements? This paper takes a case study approach to determine the economic impact housing segregation has on U.S. cities. The 20 most integrated and segregated U.S. cities were selected for analysis by dissimilarity index – a measurement designed to establish segregation ratios for metropolitan areas. Economic data covering education, public health, employment, income, and wealth was mined for all 40 cities from federally regulated databases. Methods of analysis included several clustering algorithms – used to determine if segregated and integrated cities are statistically dissimilar from one another – and association rule mining – used to discover the specific economic circumstances independently associated with segregated and integrated cities. The results determined that cities, which experience extreme levels of housing segregation, likely also suffer from poor public health and employment conditions for the city’s citizens. The implications of these results support that curtailing and eliminating discriminatory housing practices while also increasing resource allocation towards public health, local and small business support, and job placement and training are essential for making any justifiable economic improvements in U.S. cities.