Study: Gentrification benefits many blacks

PITTSBURGH, June 30 (UPI) -- The authors of a study on gentrification in U.S. cities say its supposed ill effects on low-income urban neighborhood residents are exaggerated.

The study by researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder, the University of Pittsburgh and Duke University found that when white, college-educated residents move into low-income neighborhoods, the resulting economic benefits did not all accrue to the newcomers as is usually assumed. Instead, black householders with high-school degrees accounted for a plurality of the total income gains in such neighborhoods, Time Magazine reported Monday.

"We're not saying there aren't communities where displacement isn't happening," Randall Walsh, an associate professor of economics at the University of Pittsburgh, told the magazine. "But in general, across all neighborhoods in the urbanized parts of the U.S., it looks like gentrification is a pretty good thing."

The study, which examined Census data from more than 15,000 neighborhoods across the United States in 1990 and 2000, found that low-income, non-white households did not disproportionately leave gentrifying areas. Instead, it found that while the white newcomers accounted for 20 percent of the total income gains in gentrifying neighborhoods, black householders with at least high school educations accounted for 33 percent of the income gains.