Houston city

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* -- 601,851 30.81%
Black* 75.5 487,851 24.97%
American Indian* 46.5 3,234 0.17%
Asian* 49.9 102,706 5.26%
Native Hawaiian* 73.6 680 0.03%
Other* 55.5 2,614 0.13%
Two or More Races* 40.0 23,830 1.22%
White/Black* 57.0 2,701 0.14%
White/American Indian* 39.5 2,494 0.13%
White/Asian* 41.7 4,447 0.23%
White/Other* 47.0 5,670 0.29%
Other Combinations* -- 8,518 0.44%
Hispanic 61.5 730,865 37.41%
Total -- 1,953,631 100.00%

* 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).

Home | About | Help | Contact | Use Policy