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Historic Redlining Scores for 2010 and 2020 US Census Tracts

Principal Investigator(s):  View help for Principal Investigator(s) Helen C.S. Meier, University of Michigan. Institute for Social Research. Survey Research Center; Bruce C. Mitchell, National Community Reinvestment Coalition

Version:  View help for Version V1

Name File Type Size Last Modified
  HRS2010-Shapefiles 05/26/2021 09:22:AM
  HRS2020-Shapefiles 05/26/2021 09:23:AM
HRS2010.sav application/x-spss-sav 1022.3 KB 05/26/2021 05:20:AM
HRS2020.sav application/x-spss-sav 1 MB 05/26/2021 05:21:AM
Historic Redlining Score 2010.xlsx application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet 507.2 KB 05/25/2021 10:00:AM
Historic Redlining Score 2020.xlsx application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet 511.8 KB 05/25/2021 10:00:AM

Project Citation: 

Meier, Helen C.S., and Mitchell, Bruce C. . Historic Redlining Scores for 2010 and 2020 US Census Tracts. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2021-05-26. https://doi.org/10.3886/E141121V1

Project Description

Summary:  View help for Summary
The Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) was a U.S. federal agency that graded mortgage investment risk of neighborhoods across the U.S. between 1935 and 1940. HOLC residential security maps standardized neighborhood risk appraisal methods that included race and ethnicity, pioneering the institutional logic of residential “redlining.” The Mapping Inequality Project digitized the HOLC mortgage security risk maps from the 1930s. We overlaid the HOLC maps with 2010 and 2020 census tracts for 142 cities across the U.S. using ArcGIS and determined the proportion of HOLC residential security grades contained within the boundaries. We assigned a numerical value to each HOLC risk category as follows: 1 for “A” grade, 2 for “B” grade, 3 for “C” grade, and 4 for “D” grade. We calculated a historic redlining score from the summed proportion of HOLC residential security grades multiplied by a weighting factor based on area within each census tract. A higher score means greater redlining of the census tract. Continuous historic redlining score, assessing the degree of “redlining,” as well as national and CBSA-specific quartiles of redlining, can be linked to existing data sources by census tract identifier allowing for one form of structural racism in the housing market to be assessed with a variety of outcomes.
Funding Sources:  View help for Funding Sources Greater Milwaukee Foundation (Shaw Scientist Award)

Scope of Project

Subject Terms:  View help for Subject Terms Structural racism; redlining
Geographic Coverage:  View help for Geographic Coverage United States Metro Areas

Methodology

Geographic Unit:  View help for Geographic Unit census tract

Related Publications

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Published Versions

V3 [2023-09-25]

V2 [2021-10-15]

V1 [2021-05-26]

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