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* | -- | 2,514,494 | 84.70% | |
| Black* | 64.5 | 155,429 | 5.24% | |
| American Indian* | 53.1 | 19,680 | 0.66% | |
| Asian* | 48.4 | 122,086 | 4.11% | |
| Native Hawaiian* | 80.8 | 1,094 | 0.04% | |
| Other* | 59.7 | 4,121 | 0.14% | |
| Two or More Races* | 38.9 | 52,781 | 1.78% | |
| White/Black* | 47.7 | 14,121 | 0.48% | |
| White/American Indian* | 40.6 | 9,483 | 0.32% | |
| White/Asian* | 38.2 | 9,008 | 0.30% | |
| White/Other* | 64.1 | 3,575 | 0.12% | |
| Other Combinations* | -- | 16,594 | 0.56% | |
| Hispanic | 50.3 | 99,121 | 3.34% | |
| Total Population | -- | 2,968,806 | 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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