Suburbanization in the Seventies: The “Push-Pull” Hypothesis Revisited

:This article compares the effects of “push” and “pull” factors on decisions of white and black households without children to move from central cities to the suburbs. Unlike previous studies where the independent and dependent variables are aggregate characteristics of the metropolitan areas or individual suburbs, in this article the units are individual households and the variables characteristics of these households or the metropolitan area where they live. The data suggest that black and white decisions are affected by the same variables in the same way, and that blacks and whites are equally likely to move to the suburbs. We also find that both groups tend to move away from the central cities of metropolitan areas with large black populations and in which housing is relatively concentrated in the suburbs, consistent with both the “push” and “pull” hypotheses. However, neither racial group was apparently influenced by job suburbanization or central city crime rates, which is inconsistent with these hypotheses.