1. Incomes for 1983 are reported in the text because the most recent housing data are from that year. The most recent income data are for 1985, when median incomes of married couple households were $31,161, $24,685, and $31,660 for all races, blacks, and whites, respectively. See1988 Statistical Abstract of the U.S. (Washington, DC: GPO, 1988).
2. See Mahlon Straszheim,An Econometric Model of the Urban Housing Market (New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1975); and John Kain and John Quigley,Housing Markets and Racial Discrimination: A Microeconomic Analysis (New York: Columbia University Press, or]1975).
3. See Barton Smith, “Racial Composition as a Neighborhood Amenity,” inThe Economics of Urban Amenities, edited by Douglas B. Diamond Jr. and George S. Tolley (New York: Academic Press, 1982), p. 184. Smith defines housing quality both in terms of the age of housing and of a single hedonic weighted variable of several attributes.
4. For citations of some of the many articles on this subject, see John Yinger, “Prejudice and Discrimination in the Urban Housing Market,” inCurrent Issues in Urban Economics, edited by Peter Mieszkowski and Mahlon Straszheim (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), p. 458.
5. The 1940 Census of Housing classified units as either having or lacking essential plumbing and as either needing or not needing major repairs to approximate structural quality. In 1950, the Census replaced the category “needing major repairs” with the two categories, sound and dilapidated. The 1960 Census of Housing added a third category, deteriorating, to the two defined in 1950, to cover what they found to be a gray area. Because a 1962 evaluation of the 1960 Census of Housing found that most units would be classified differently on the three measures if resurveyed, the Census Bureau dropped these condition proxies from the 1970 Census. Since 1973, the Annual Housing Survey—now the American Housing Survey—has provided a variety of indicators of housing condition: plumbing (lacks or shares complete), kitchen (lacks or shares complete), sewage, heating type, maintenance (leaking roof, cracks or holes in wall or ceiling, holes in floor, broken plaster or peeling paint), condition of public hall, toilet access, and electrical condition. See U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census,The Annual (American) Housing Survey (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, selected years).