The dissimilarity index measures the relative separation or integration of groups across all neighborhoods of a city or metropolitan area. If a city's white-black dissimilarity index were 65, that would mean that 65% of white people would need to move to another neighborhood to make whites and blacks evenly distributed across all neighborhoods.
| Dissimilarity Indices | ||||
| Dissimilarity Index | Percent of | |||
| With Whites* | Population** | Total Population | ||
| White* | -- | 4,798,533 | 58.00% | |
| Black* | 83.6 | 1,541,641 | 18.64% | |
| American Indian* | 63.8 | 10,585 | 0.13% | |
| Asian* | 50.9 | 378,172 | 4.57% | |
| Native Hawaiian* | 87.7 | 2,219 | 0.03% | |
| Other* | 70.3 | 10,410 | 0.13% | |
| Two or More Races* | 44.7 | 114,624 | 1.39% | |
| White/Black* | 62.4 | 16,824 | 0.20% | |
| White/American Indian* | 57.4 | 10,931 | 0.13% | |
| White/Asian* | 47.5 | 23,104 | 0.28% | |
| White/Other* | 65.6 | 34,795 | 0.42% | |
| Other Combinations* | -- | 28,970 | 0.35% | |
| Hispanic | 64.8 | 1,416,584 | 17.12% | |
| Total Population | -- | 8,272,768 | 100.00% | |
* Non-Hispanic only.
* When a group's population is small, its dissimilarity index may be high even if the group's members are evenly distributed throughout the area. Thus, when a group's population is less than 1,000, exercise caution in interpreting its dissimilarity indices.
Source: William H. Frey and Dowell Myers' analysis of Census 2000; and the Social Science Data Analysis Network (SSDAN).
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