Accessing the best possible neighborhood: family types and residential cross-segregation

David Pelletier, Université de Montréal

Our main topic is a narrowly defined form of demographic segregation: segregation by family type. However, since the spatial distribution of married, cohabiting, lone-mother, or lone-father families does not depend solely on their structure, we must also consider other aspects of their identity, such as their socioeconomic and ethnocultural characteristics. The combination of these factors produces a cross-segregation that we investigate using 2006 census data for the Montreal metropolitan area. We first use segregation indices to highlight a "raw" family type segregation and we then use locational attainment models to determine its "net" effect on the median household income of the neighborhood. We find that family type in itself isn't a major predictor of locational attainment except for the largest ethnocultural group in the city, Francophones. There is however a large and significant interaction between ethnicity and family type that leads us to question the findings of studies that do not take into account the internal heterogeneity of family types.