White Flight or Flight from Poverty

Authors: Charles Jego Bertrand M Roehner

Publish Date: 2006/05/06

Volume: 1, Issue: 1, Pages: 75-87

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Abstract

The phenomenon of White flight is often illustrated by the case of Detroit whose population dropped from 180 to 095 million between 1950 and 2000 while at the same time its Black and Hispanic component grew from 30 to 85 But is this case really representative The present paper shows that the phenomenon of White flight is in fact essentially a flight from poverty As a confirmation we show that the changes in White or Black populations are highly correlated which means that White flight is always paralleled by Black flight and Hispanic flight as well This broader interpretation of White flight accounts not only for the case of northern cities such as Cincinnati Cleveland or Detroit but for all population changes at county level provided the population density is higher than a threshold of about 50 km2 which corresponds to moderately urbanized areas as can be found in states like Indiana or Virginia for instance

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