After school, she and other neighborhood kids would buy snacks at the corner store and toss balls in the street as their parents returned home, some in uniform from work, others as teachers or office workers. Neighbors chatted on porches and lawns of unassuming single-family homes. There were some poor families and some wealthy ones, but more than a third of her neighbors made between $40,000 and $75,000 in today’s dollars—enough to live comfortably. But by 2020, the income distribution had tilted so that half of families made $100,000 or more, census data show. Across the neighborhood, the modest homes of Ms. Broadnax’s youth have been replaced by luxurious mansions known informally as “tall skinnys” that tower over the older homes that remain. So when it came to Ms. Broadnax’s turn to pay the rent, using her own middle-income teacher salary, the cost was out of reach. Like many other Americans, Nashville residents are increasingly buffeted by economic tides that push them into neighborhoods that are either much wealthier or much poorer than the area’s norm, according to a New York Times analysis. A smaller share of families live in middle-class neighborhoods, places where incomes are typically within 25 percent of the area median. In Nashville, the share of families living in middle-class neighborhoods fell by 15 percentage points between 1990 and 2020. But the share of families in wealthy ones increased by 11 points, and the share living in poor neighborhoods increased by four points. In some ways, the pattern reflects how rich Americans choose to live near other rich people and how poorer Americans struggle to get by. But the pattern also shows a broader trend of income inequality in the economy, as the population of families making more than $100,000 has grown much faster than other groups, even after adjusting for inflation, and the number of families making less than $40,000 has grown to twice as much as families in the middle. Ms. Broadnax has become part of a major nationwide push for affordable housing. High rents in the city initially sent her to the more affordable Antioch neighborhood in 2011. But housing prices there have nearly doubled since 2018, so buying a home meant moving further away to a suburban community called La Vergne. “The same people who work in their hometown can’t afford to live in their hometown,” Ms. Broadnax said of Nashville. Nationally, only half of American families living in metropolitan areas can say their neighborhood’s income level is within 25 percent of the area average. A generation ago, 62 percent of families lived in these middle-income neighborhoods. “People are being evicted, and it’s tearing up some historically working-class neighborhoods,” says Marybeth Shinn, a professor at Vanderbilt University who studies homelessness and social exclusion. “You gradually turn a neighborhood from a fairly average kind of neighborhood that a lot of people could live in to a neighborhood where only people with a little more means can live.” This development has mixed consequences for people who see their neighborhoods changing. When Jim Polk bought his home in East Nashville in 1979, the community left some amenities to be desired. The park near his home was in disrepair and the neighborhood had few sidewalks or lights. As the firefighters, nurses and local government workers in the neighborhood were replaced by technicians, engineers and lawyers, Mr. Polk mourned the loss of their old, familiar neighborhood where his four daughters had learned to accept people of different backgrounds. “So many families have moved in over time,” said Mr. Polk, who worked for decades as a community education coordinator for the city’s public schools. “It didn’t remind them of where they used to live and it was so expensive to live in.” But Mr. Polk and his wife managed to keep up with property tax increases on their city pensions, and they couldn’t ignore neighborhood improvements: New sidewalks and street lights were installed, and the neglected park was cleaned up. When his church was destroyed by a tornado in 2020, his new neighbors had the resources to help the church purchase a new building. Even more significant was the rapid appreciation of house prices in the neighborhood. Mr. Polk bought his house for $36,000. A home directly across the street sold for more than $1.5 million in February, according to Zillow. “There have been improvements in the services available to people living in the neighbourhood,” he said. “But who can join?” Experts say the changes in housing patterns represent a form of economic segregation, as Americans are less likely to live in neighborhoods with people from other socioeconomic classes. Economic segregation exacerbates the problems often associated with income inequality. There are what researchers call “neighborhood effects,” with studies finding that poor children have a better chance of moving up the socioeconomic ladder if they grow up outside of concentrated poverty. And wealthy neighborhoods tend to have a disproportionate share of resources, such as better schools, more parks, and greater access to health care professionals. This economic segregation not only “concentrates low-income families into high-poverty neighborhoods, but it concentrates affluent families into affluent neighborhoods, where they can engage in a kind of accumulation of opportunity,” said Sean F. Reardon, a sociologist at Stanford University. He and another sociologist, Kendra Bischoff of Cornell University, have written several papers on economic segregation. Consider Durham, NC Since 1990, it has seen an explosion of wealth and investment in the city center. At the same time, the percentage of families living in lower-income neighborhoods has doubled. Turquoise LeJeune Parker, an elementary school technology teacher, said dividing the reality of rich and poor neighborhoods didn’t do her low-income students any good. Describing what he saw as the prevailing mentality of people flocking to affluent areas of the city, he said: “We’re not going to push for resources for our schools, we’re not going to push for any of that because ‘I’ve got what I need my side of the city, so I’m fine.” To some extent, economic segregation has gone hand in hand with the removal of the middle class in general. At the same time, local governments across the country have done little to preserve or expand affordable housing, instead investing in attracting high-wage workers, which drives up prices and displaces lower-income residents. And exclusionary zoning laws often prevent denser, cheaper housing from being built in upscale enclaves—Tennessee has even barred cities from enacting zoning laws that would protect affordability. Property taxes on many homes have skyrocketed, prompting longtime residents to sell to investors. But whatever the cause, similar trends can be seen across the country. The Boston metropolitan area saw middle-class neighborhoods shift in both directions. In the 1990s and 2000s, many were falling behind financially. Over the past decade, due to widespread gentrification in the city, many modest neighborhoods have been transformed into much wealthier ones. A generation ago, Seattle’s tech industry was starting to grow, but the area was also a major manufacturing hub, and seven out of 10 families lived in middle-class neighborhoods. Today, only five in 10 do. Almost a third live in wealthy enclaves. In the Midwest, the share of families living in middle-class neighborhoods has declined by 13 percentage points in Columbus, Ohio, since 1990, by 12 in Chicago, and by nine in Indianapolis. And in Orlando, nearly 70 percent of area residents lived in “average” neighborhoods in 1990, according to census data. In 2020, the same was true for just 46 percent. This leaves many people feeling like they are on the outside looking in. Michael Street is a union electrician who moved from Nashville to Goodlettsville about 25 minutes away. He said he spends his days driving around Nashville, working on houses that have all been renovated, rebuilt or rendered unrecognizable in neighborhoods he can no longer afford. “Either you’re poor, or you’re rich,” he said. “The middle class is a kind of phasing out. Either you have a lot of money or you’re just getting by.” Methodology To measure the growing level of economic segregation in the United States, The New York Times used census data to compare each census tract’s median household income to the median for the surrounding metropolitan area for the years 1990, 2000, 2010 and 2020. The analysis measured how many families lived in middle-class areas where the median family income was within 25 percent of the area median, and how many lived in areas where the income level was 25 percent or more above or below the area median. All figures adjusted for inflation to 2020 prices. Source data and maps are from socialexplorer.com and nhgis.org.
