Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Neighborhoods are critical contexts for well-being, particularly for children, but little is known about whether children experience greater neighborhood inequalities than adults. One reason children may be more segregated than adults is their families consider schooling when making residential choices. I document racial segregation between neighborhoods among school-age children and adults in 2000 and 2010 using exposure and evenness measures, and I examine the proportion of neighborhood segregation occurring between school districts. While the racial composition of children’s and adults’ neighborhoods is similar, there are differences in exposure to their own age group. Compared to adults’ exposure to other adults, children are exposed to fewer white and more minority, particularly Hispanic, children in their neighborhood. This greater exposure to Hispanics is due in part to compositional differences (the larger Hispanic youth than adult population), but children are also more unevenly sorted across neighborhoods by race than adults. White children are particularly more segregated from minority children than white adults from minority adults. I find that school district boundaries account for a larger proportion of children’s than adults’ segregation, consistent with schooling concerns being a segregating force. Future research must consider both school and neighborhood contexts when documenting the level of inequality children face