Residential segregation in urban Mexico: levels and patterns

Abstract

Changing patterns of urban development in Latin America have drawn increasing attention to residential segregation, yet there are no systematic quantitative analyses in the literature. Using data from the Mexican census of 2000, this paper measures spatial patterns and levels of segregation by ethnicity and socioeconomic status in over one hundred cities. Findings confirm that many recognized patterns hold across a wide variety of cities. Low-income and informally employed households tend to live in peripheral areas of the city, while high-income households are more centrally concentrated. High-income areas are denser and more socioeconomically diverse. Further, the paper shows that there is a statistically significant relationship between segregation by income and city size; larger cities are more segregated. Similarly, regional differences in patterns of segregation are also statistically significant and large, demonstrating the importance of both historical periods of urbanization and levels of regional economic development.

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