Measuring Residential Decentralization of Blacks and Whites

Abstract

This paper presents estimates of exponential population density functions for blacks and whites in 1960 and 1970 for thirty-three cities. Classical statistical techniques are used on a random sample of twenty five census tracts from each of the cities. These results suggest, on the one hand, that the empirical generalization of the negative relationship between population density and distance from the city center explains a substantial amount of the variance in the logarithm of average gross population density for blacks. On the other hand, this empirical specification does not adequately explain the relationship between average gross population density and dist- ance from the city center for whites.