ABSTRACT
There has been a longstanding debate in the UK about the residential patterns of ethnic minority groups and the consequences of these patterns for social cohesion. However, there has been less focus on the role of residential segregation in perpetuating the socio-economic disadvantage of ethnic minority groups and, as yet, there is little evidence on how residential segregation patterns relate to spatial patterns of ethnic inequality. This chapter draws on data from the 2001 and 2011 Censuses in the UK to explore how ethnic group concentrations within local authorities in England and Wales are related to patterns of ethnic inequality in employment, education, housing and health. The Index of Dissimilarity is used to measure residential segregation for nine ethnic minority groups in 2011 and how it has changed since 2001, for neighbourhoods (output areas) within districts. Ethnic inequality is measured as the absolute difference in the proportion of White British people and people from ethnic minority groups within districts for employment, education, housing and health. Considerable variation by ethnic group and district is found in the association between segregation and socio-economic inequality, suggesting both positive and negative ‘effects’ of segregation. Key findings are that: high residential segregation is associated with high ethnic inequalities in education within districts; high residential segregation is associated with low ethnic inequalities in employment, health and housing and this relationship strengthened over the 2000s; higher levels of ethnic inequality are found in districts which have had least reduction in segregation, or experienced an increase in segregation.
