Residential location determines access to resources like education and income

Evidence

As Robert Park noted in 1926, “it is because social relations are so frequently and so inevitably correlated with spatial relations; because physical distances so frequently are… indexes of social distances, that statistics have any significance whatever for sociology” (Park, 1926:8). In virtually all societies, social and economic resources are unevenly distributed in space, so where one lives plays a significant role in determining one’s prospects for education, health, employment, income, and prestige (Massey and Denton, 1985). If members of a particular racial or ethnic group are highly segregated, therefore, they probably do not have access to the full complement of public and private resources necessary for success in modern society. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2415

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Massey and Denton’s American Apartheid thesis on hypersegregation as a driver of entrenched inequality.