Poverty Concentration in a Multiethnic City: The Impact of Compositional and Redistributive Forces in Miami, Florida, 1980-1990

Over time, the urban poor in the United States have become spatially concentrated within extremely poor neighborhoods, and as a result increasingly isolated from the nonpoor. Two general forces that vary in scale have been shown to be responsible for this process. First, poverty concentration may arise simply from metropolitan-wide changes in the overall population of the poor and/or nonpoor, a collection of forces that I refer to here as compositional forces. Second, poverty concentration may also result from intrametropolitan forces that cause the poor and/or nonpoor to redistribute themselves within metropolitan areas. These latter forces are referred to here as redistributive forces. In this paper, I examine the degree to which these two separate forces have impacted the levels of poverty concentration among African Americans, Hispanics, and Whites within Miami, Florida, from 1980 to 1990. Both forces functioned to increase poverty concentration among all three groups, with compositional forces generally having the stronger effect. A racial/ethnic continuum exists in Miami, as poor African Americans were the most spatially isolated of all groups and were more significantly impacted by redistributive forces. Poor Whites were the least isolated, while poor Hispanics exhibited intermediate levels of spatial isolation and poverty exposure. Evidence suggests that the residential experiences of both poor African Americans and Hispanics were strongly influenced by the migratory behavior of the nonpoor in Miami.