Urban Location and Segregation of the Aged: A Block-Level Analysis

Sociological treatment of the aged as a minority group and ecological theories of urban structure suggest that the urban aged should be segregated from other agellife-cycle groups and be concentrated near city centers. This study examines intraurban location and segregation of the aged in two cities, Cleveland and San Diego. A path model is specified from ecological theory which takes location of the aged as a function of distance from the city center, housing type, housing value, space characteristics and household types. The model is estimated using block-level data from Cleveland and San Diego. Although the two cities differ in ecological structure, the aged in both tend to be located on blocks near the city center, with multi-unit structures, high value housing, low population potential, low crowding, and a high proportion of primary individuals. The relationships, however, are generally weak and the variance explained small, indicating dispersion of the aged throughout the cities. Dissimilarity indices also show a moderate degree of segregation between the aged and the non-aged. These results suggest that conceptions of the aged as segregated into centralized, undesirable urban areas are overstated.