Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The increased prevalence of gentrification across many US cities has generated anxiety among residents of gentrifying neighborhoods and piqued the interest of scholars of neighborhood change. The fate of the residents who were already living in such gentrifying neighborhoods–either by choice or lack thereof–remains an important yet little understood outcome of the gentrification process. In this study, we will build on past research on the effects of gentrification by using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to assess mobility patterns in gentrifying census tracts in US cities. We focus on the destinations of residents of gentrifying neighborhoods as this aspect of the gentrification process has been little studied. One study of gentrification in Philadelphia did examine the residential destinations of those who moved and found disadvantaged residents of gentrifying neighborhoods moving to worse neighborhoods. We build on the findings of the Ding et al. study by using the PSID to extend their analyses to gentrifying neighborhoods across the US. We utilize the geocoded version of the PSID which allows us to identify the census tract of each respondent. With data spanning back to 1968, the PSID allows for a rich analysis of mobility patterns in the wake of gentrification.