Biography: Ann Owens is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research centers on the causes and consequences of social inequality, with a focus on neighborhoods, housing, education, and geographic and social mobility. Ann has particular expertise on neighborhood and school segregation, and her research also examines how housing and educational policies cause or alleviate social inequalities. Ann received her PhD in Sociology and Social Policy from Harvard University and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality.
The Changing Relationship between School and Residential Segregation
Description: Residential and school segregation are key indicators of unequal opportunity and key drivers of unequal outcomes in children’s lives. Reducing segregation, then, is a promising approach for reducing racial/ethnic and economic inequality among children on a range of outcomes. A comprehensive approach to reducing segregation must account for the link between segregation in neighborhoods and segregation in schools. Historically, school segregation was seen as “downstream” of residential segregation—schools were segregated because the neighborhoods zoned to them were segregated. More recently, scholars have framed the relationship between residential and school segregation as cyclical and bidirectional, and changing demographic patterns and school choice regimes have complicated this relationship. This talk examines how closely coupled school and residential segregation are in the US, how this has changed over time, and the demographic, geographic, and policy conditions that influence the extent of their correspondence.
A recording of this event can be found here.
