Essays on multi-level analyses of racial inequality

This dissertation analyzes the contribution of contextual variables---neighborhood contexts and labor market structure---in generating racial/ethnic disadvantage in health and labor market outcomes. The findings from the three essays independently and jointly confirm the significance of residential segregation as the "structural linchpin" of American race relations, largely responsible for shaping racially differentiated opportunity structures to maintain and reinforce socioeconomic inequalities along racial lines.;Chapter 2 investigates the longitudinal relationship between neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) and self-rated health, using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the Neighborhood Change Data Base. Findings reveal that the effects of neighborhood SES increase with the duration of neighborhood exposure and that there are substantial racial differences in the process. Also, long-term measures of neighborhood exposure, specifically neighborhood exposure trajectories, account for a substantial portion of the black-white health gap as well as explain widening black-white health gap with age.;Chapter 3 shows the influences of local labor market structure---demographic concentration, industrial mix, institutional context, and residential segregation---on the relative wages and occupational status of black and Hispanic workers. Notable findings include the negative association between residential segregation and the relative wages and occupational status of black and Hispanic workers, and the negative effects of concentrations of high-end service employment on the black-white wage gap and Hispanic-white occupational and wage gap.;In Chapter 4, I empirically test whether the associations found in Chapter 3 differentially hold across educational strata by conducting a subgroup analysis for high school dropouts, high school graduates, and college graduates. The findings reveal that nominal differentiation (race/ethnicity) interacts with hierarchical differentiation (education) to produce complex patterns of inequality across space. Different structural factors are associated with the wage gap of different race-education subgroups, but residential segregation stands out in its robustly negative effect on the relative wages of all racial/ethnic minorities with at least a high school degree. Furthermore, college-educated blacks and native-born Hispanics encounter considerable wage penalties in labor markets with disproportionate shares of high-end service employment.