When white families migrated from city centers to the seclusion of the surrounding suburbs in the great “white flight” of the 20th century, housing prices dropped, allowing more blacks to become homeowners, a study in the Journal of Urban Economics revealed. Looking at data between 1940 and 1980, researchers estimated that for every 1,000 white households that left a city center, 100 black families become homeowners.
The ratio of white flight to black homeownership varies by city, with the numbers dependent on a variety of factors, including the percentage of available housing stock and the size of the city’s black population.
Source: Atlantic Cities
