Inequality Discussion Group with Hao Liang

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CSI’s Inequality Discussion Groups bring together Cornell faculty and graduate students from around campus to discuss and improve their in-progress research.

Title: From Neighborhoods to Buildings: Building Stratification and Immigrant–Native Residential Inequality

Abstract: Residential segregation research has predominantly focused on neighborhoods, leaving residential differentiation across and within buildings comparatively understudied. As neighborhoods become increasingly heterogeneous through processes such as gentrification and demographic diversification, neighborhood-level measures may obscure substantial inequalities embedded in the buildings where people live. This study introduces the concept of building stratification to capture two interrelated dimensions of residential inequality: sorting across building types and individual buildings, and differences among residents sharing the same building. Using restricted Japanese census microdata, I develop a novel spatial matching approach to identify individuals residing in the same residential building, providing rare population-scale evidence at a spatial resolution typically unavailable in contemporary population data. The results reveal substantial immigrant–native residential inequalities across multiple spatial scales. Immigrants reside in less advantaged neighborhoods and buildings, with building-level disparities persisting even within the same neighborhoods and building types. Yet, immigrants exhibit higher levels of education and other socioeconomic resources than native residents sharing the same buildings. These findings reveal a striking disconnect between immigrants’ individual attainment and the characteristics of their residential environments. By documenting stratification both across and within residential buildings, this study establishes building stratification as a critical but largely overlooked dimension of residential inequality.