Children are segregated from one another because of the residential choices and options available to their parents. Our results show that there is more segregation among children than in the whole population. For example, the average black among people of all ages lives in a metro area where the Index of Dissimilarity from whites, our principal indicator of uneven housing patterns, is 65.0, while for children it is 68.3. There was a slight decline in black-white segregation for the whole population (down 3.8 points in the last decade), but a smaller decline in the segregation of children (down 3.3 points).

These differences result from the fact that adults without children and families with children live in somewhat different kinds of neighborhoods. Whites living in more integrated neighborhoods may be more likely to be childless - either young adults or parents whose children have grown up. At the same time, we suspect that white families with children are disproportionately found in predominantly white settings. Past research has shown, for example, that having school-aged children is a strong predictor of living in the suburbs for whites.

In addition, some of what we measure as integration derives from institutional settings, such as college dormitories and military bases, which tend to bring together adults of different races, but do not much affect where children live.

Children’s black-white segregation remains very high in much of the country. In metro areas where black youngsters are as much as 20% of the population, segregation is highest and likely to have declined the least. More than 6 million of America’s black children live in these regions.

Conversely, black-white segregation is lowest, and it tended to decline more since 1990 in metro areas where blacks are less than 10% of the child population. But only about a million black children live in these regions.

The top 10 metro areas with the highest levels of black-white segregation of children include: Detroit, Milwaukee, New York, Newark, Chicago, Cleveland, Miami, Cincinnati, Birmingham, and St. Louis. Several of these include older cities that were the destination of the Great Migration of African Americans from the South in the pre-Civil Rights era. But two are southern, and southern cities like Memphis, New Orleans, and Baton Rouge are also listed among the 20 most segregated.

At the extremes, Detroit and Memphis, black children live in neighborhoods where more than 80% of their peers are black. In metro areas where black youngsters are above 20% of the population, the average black child is in a neighborhood that is two-thirds black.