This study shows:

• Black and Hispanic children are highly segregated in the neighborhoods where they live.  They also live in unequal neighborhoods, as measured by neighborhoods' income levels, poverty rate, unemployment, homeownership, and other indicators. 

• Neighborhood segregation is especially high in the City of Boston.  But seen from a regional perspective, the main source of segregation is minorities?exclusion from most residential suburbs.  Less than 10% of children under 18 in the Boston region lived in the City of Boston in 2000.  But nearly half of black children lived in the City.  A small set of older, denser suburbs (including such places as Lynn, Lowell, Chelsea, Lawrence, and Worcester) house a majority of Hispanic children.

• School segregation is lower in Boston than in other portions of the region.  This reflects the history of desegregation efforts in the City, despite erosion of these gains in the last decade.  But again, the main source of segregation in the region is the exclusion of minority children from schools in the residential suburbs.  Only 25-30% of black and Hispanic children in public elementary grades attend schools in these districts, compared to 85% of white children and more than half of Asian children.

• As a result, black and Hispanic students also attend unequal schools, compared to white and Asian students, as measured by the concentration of poor children in their elementary schools.