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The Puerto Rican effect on Hispanic residential segregation: A study of the Hartford and Springfield metro areas in national perspective

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Abstract

Hartford, Connecticut and Springfield, Massachusetts have both a large Puerto Rican population and an extremely high proportion of Puerto Rican among the Hispanics, making these metro areas valuable for study of the distinctive impact of Puerto Rican presence. Between 1990 and 2000, non-Hispanic Whites in these metropolitan areas were moving away from towns and cities where Hispanics were concentrated and growing. Such population separation may in part be attributable to the relatively high-poverty level among Hispanics. Multivariate analysis applied to data for 38 metro areas with varying levels of Puerto Rican predominance among Hispanics shows, however, that ethnic group segregation was influenced by Puerto Rican presence even when controlling for the economic status of Hispanics. The “Puerto Rican effect” may stem from the greater racialization of Puerto Ricans. By contrast other Hispanic groups may have benefitted from an immigrant identity that has now become more of a liability.

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Notes

  1. Unless otherwise noted, all figures in this section and below are drawn from the US Census 2000, Summary File (SF)1.

  2. Further relevant background on Hartford and Springfield can be found in Bauer (1975), Grant and Grant (1986), Weaver (1982), Glasser (1997) and Black (2009).

  3. Such population dispersion was also occurring on national scale: “Between 1970 and 2000 Puerto Ricans gravitated to the South, moved within the Northeast, maintained their presence in the Midwest, and were found in every state of the union. Migration which used to be primarily aimed at New York City now flows directly to other parts of the country” (Acosta-Belén and Santiago, 2006, 86–87).

  4. This was calculated from data on the change in the number of Whites and the number of Hispanics between 1990 and 2000 in the 58 towns and cities of the Hartford Metro area and the 28 towns and cities in the Springfield metro area. The correlation between White population change and Hispanic population change was – 0.89 for Hartford and – 0.98 for Springfield.

  5. Given the high cost of living in the urban areas of the Northeast, below twice the poverty level seems a more appropriate standard of economic hardship.

  6. The measure is equal to half the sum of the absolute differences between the distributions of the two groups being compared across all census tracts of the metro area.

  7. The figures represent “the national averages for levels of minority-white segregation …, weighted by the number of minority-group members in the metropolitan area, for metropolitan areas with more than 2500 minority-group members” (Logan et al, 2004, 6–7).

  8. Using the Hispanic/White index of dissimilarity as the dependent variable, the beta coefficients in the regression equation were 0.469 for the Hispanic/White income ratio and 0.460 for the percent Puerto Rican among Hispanics, both statistically significant at the 0.01 level. The r square was 0.67. Multicollinearity was not a problem here, as shown by the tolerance statistic of 0.518.

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Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Theresa Morris for assistance with the statistical methodology and the anonymous referees for their constructive comments on a prior version. The article was originally presented at the Meeting of the Puerto Rican Studies Association, 1–4 October 2008, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

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  1. Trinity College, Hartford, CT

    Michael Paul Sacks

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Sacks, M. The Puerto Rican effect on Hispanic residential segregation: A study of the Hartford and Springfield metro areas in national perspective. Lat Stud 9, 87–105 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1057/lst.2011.1

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