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* | -- | 2,801,267 | 34.98% | |
| Black* | 85.3 | 1,962,154 | 24.50% | |
| American Indian* | 75.5 | 17,321 | 0.22% | |
| Asian* | 54.1 | 780,229 | 9.74% | |
| Native Hawaiian* | 83.0 | 2,829 | 0.04% | |
| Other* | 70.0 | 58,775 | 0.73% | |
| Two or More Races* | 54.4 | 225,149 | 2.81% | |
| White/Black* | 63.8 | 12,692 | 0.16% | |
| White/American Indian* | 65.7 | 3,886 | 0.05% | |
| White/Asian* | 48.1 | 22,947 | 0.29% | |
| White/Other* | 52.9 | 63,253 | 0.79% | |
| Other Combinations* | -- | 122,371 | 1.53% | |
| Hispanic | 69.5 | 2,160,554 | 26.98% | |
| Total | -- | 8,008,278 | 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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