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Boston, MA-NH

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SEGREGATION: DISSIMILARITY INDICES

The dissimilarity index measures the relative separation or integration of groups across all neighborhoods of a city or metropolitan area. If a city's white-black dissimilarity index were 65, that would mean that 65% of white people would need to move to another neighborhood to make whites and blacks evenly distributed across all neighborhoods.

Dissimilarity Indices
Dissimilarity Index Percent of
With Whites* Population** Total Population
White* -- 5,023,779 82.93%
Black* 68.8 280,062 4.62%
American Indian* 54.6 9,974 0.16%
Asian* 53.3 234,413 3.87%
Native Hawaiian* 83.4 1,611 0.03%
Other* 69.1 41,336 0.68%
Two or More Races* 44.1 102,774 1.70%
White/Black* 50.8 13,762 0.23%
White/American Indian* 46.6 11,118 0.18%
White/Asian* 44.5 15,093 0.25%
White/Other* 60.6 26,931 0.44%
Other Combinations* -- 35,870 0.59%
Hispanic 64.0 363,877 6.01%
Total Population -- 6,057,826 100.00%

* Non-Hispanic only.

* When a group's population is small, its dissimilarity index may be high even if the group's members are evenly distributed throughout the area. Thus, when a group's population is less than 1,000, exercise caution in interpreting its dissimilarity indices.

Source: William H. Frey and Dowell Myers' analysis of Census 2000; and the Social Science Data Analysis Network (SSDAN).

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