CensusScope -- Segregation: Dissimilarity Indices

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	Exposure by Race
	Dissimilarity Indices

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CensusScope is a product of the Social Science Data Analysis Network.

St. Louis, MO-IL

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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*	--	2,014,776	77.38%
Black*	78.0	474,549	18.23%
American Indian*	49.3	5,347	0.21%
Asian*	52.0	36,789	1.41%
Native Hawaiian*	86.2	594	0.02%
Other*	70.4	2,865	0.11%
Two or More Races*	39.6	29,010	1.11%
White/Black*	56.4	7,293	0.28%
White/American Indian*	45.0	6,734	0.26%
White/Asian*	50.7	4,836	0.19%
White/Other*	69.4	3,287	0.13%
Other Combinations*	--	6,860	0.26%
Hispanic	36.7	39,677	1.52%
Total Population	--	2,603,607	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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