Over fifty years, the demographic map of Black America has transformed so dramatically that economists compare it to the Great Migration itself—that seismic movement of Black families from rural South to industrial North that reshaped the nation a century ago. Where 49% of Black Americans lived in large cities in 1970, just 25% do today. Meanwhile, Black suburban populations have more than doubled, rising from 16% to 36% of the Black population. This shift, while reshaping neighborhoods across the country, has also revealed deepening fault lines within Black communities themselves.
Evan Mast of the University of Notre Dame and Alexander Bartik of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign set out to understand why this movement happened—and what it means. Their study, forthcoming in the Review of Economics and Statistics, examined census data from 1970 to 2016 and found something striking: the drivers of this suburbanization are fundamentally different from the forces that powered earlier waves of Black migration. "What we really wanted to know was whether suburbanization affected Black households' neighborhood quality, schools, public services and intergenerational mobility," they wrote.
The researchers identified two primary forces pulling Black families outward. Improved suburban amenities—better schools, parks, services, and quality of life—accounted for 60% of the movement, while falling housing prices explained another 30%. Surprisingly, factors like gentrification of Black neighborhoods, rising income and education levels, and suburban decline together explained only 10% of the shift. The story, in other words, is largely one of attraction to better opportunities rather than escape from deteriorating ones.
But here is where the picture darkens. The neighborhoods Black families left behind have hollowed out. Majority-Black neighborhoods with poverty rates above 20% in 1970 have lost 60% of their Black population and 40 of their total population. Meanwhile, the gains in the suburbs have not been evenly distributed. Black suburbanites—now disproportionately middle-class—have seen their median income rise modestly from 61% to 66% of the average white suburban income. Black city dwellers, by contrast, have fallen further behind, their median income dropping from 58% to 50% of the average white income.
The researchers identified a crucial reason: unlike the white flight that preceded earlier Black migration waves and crashed housing prices, this era has seen "significantly lower" white flight from suburbs. With white families staying put, housing prices in suburbs remain relatively high, creating what Mast calls "income segregation" that keeps lower-income Black households confined to cities while their more affluent counterparts escape. The cost differential between city and suburban living, especially at the lower end of the price spectrum, essentially locks in these divisions.
The trend shows no signs of slowing. Since 2000 alone, the number of Black children living in cities has fallen by 30%—a rapid drain of youth from urban centers. What emerges is a portrait of Black America increasingly divided by zip code, with suburbs growing more diverse and prosperous while cities, no longer serving as the entry point to opportunity they once were, face persistent challenges. "One outcome is that the suburbs look a little bit more diverse and are more representative of the country than they used to be," Mast reflected—yet the cost of that progress is measured in the widening gap between those who could afford to leave and those who could not.