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Dissimilarity Indices

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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* -- 79,451 45.76%
Black* 50.8 22,103 12.73%
American Indian* 58.6 1,446 0.83%
Asian* 52.2 10,303 5.93%
Native Hawaiian* 82.4 81 0.05%
Other* 50.0 1,731 1.00%
Two or More Races* 39.6 6,357 3.66%
White/Black* 45.5 808 0.47%
White/American Indian* 50.2 314 0.18%
White/Asian* 52.7 523 0.30%
White/Other* 52.2 1,424 0.82%
Other Combinations* -- 3,288 1.89%
Hispanic 57.6 52,146 30.03%
Total -- 173,618 100.00%

* 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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