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November 2006

Volume 112, Number 3
ajs Volume 112 Number 3 (November 2006): 667–709
© 2006 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
0002-9602/2006/11203-0001$10.00
DOI: 10.1086/507856

Neighborhood Choice and Neighborhood Change1

Elizabeth E. Bruch

University of Michigan

Robert D. Mare

University of California, Los Angeles

This article examines the relationships between the residential choices of individuals and aggregate segregation patterns. Analyses based on computational models show that high levels of segregation occur only when individuals’ preferences follow a threshold function. If individuals make finer‐grained distinctions among neighborhoods that vary in racial composition, preferences alone do not lead to segregation. Vignette data indicate that individuals respond in a continuous way to variations in the racial makeup of neighborhoods rather than to a threshold. Race preferences alone may be insufficient to account for the high levels of segregation observed in American cities.

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  • 1Early stages of this work were supported by the National Computational Science Alliance. The authors also received support from the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Council on Research of the UCLA Academic Senate. The authors benefited from the helpful advice of John Miller, Scott Page, Frauke Kreuter, Mark Handcock, Martina Morris, Anne Pebley, Christine Schwartz, Judith Seltzer, and several anonymous reviewers; and participants in the Santa Fe Institute’s 2000 Graduate Workshop in Economics, the MacArthur Foundation Network on Social Interactions and Inequality, and seminars at Stanford University, the University of Washington, and the University of Wisconsin. Direct correspondence to: Elizabeth Bruch, School of Public Health, University of Michigan, 109 Observatory Drive, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109‐2029. E‐mail: .

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