O'Neil Meghan M, Roscigno Vincent J
School of Criminal Justice, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States of America.
Department of Sociology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2025 Jan 14;20(1):e0308121. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0308121. eCollection 2025.
Research over the past two decades has noted significant racial/ethnic wealth inequalities-inequalities with important implications for life chances and institutional access. Home ownership is as a foundational element of such inequality with broad consequences for exposure to crime, quality of public safety services, and access to healthcare, education, and employment. Building on earlier scholarship that has tended to focus on specific forms of mortgages, we draw in this article on over 1.4 million diverse mortgage applications from the largest 100 U.S. metropolitan areas to interrogate racial/ethnic disparities for (1) all home types (mobile homes, condominiums, multi/single-family units), (2) all lien holders (private/government backed), (3) all purposes (vacation/rental/owner-occupied), and (4) all buyer loan sequences (purchase, refinance, home-equity/improvement). Our analyses, which make use of multilevel modeling, reveal durable inequalities for African Americans and Hispanics across time and advantages for Non-Hispanic White and Asian-American applicants. Such disadvantages are likewise observed for those seeking housing in highly concentrated minority locales, although such effects seem to vary by applicant race/ethnicity. Specifically, mortgage originations, while generally less likely in high minority concentrated areas, appear to be more likely for Black/Hispanic borrowers in areas that have been becoming increasingly minority concentrated. Mortgage lending, we conclude, remains a deeply problematic dimension of racial/ethnic inequality with important consequences for persistent segregation, wealth disparities, and the intergenerational transmission of advantage/disadvantage.
过去二十年的研究指出了显著的种族/族裔财富不平等现象——这种不平等对生活机遇和机构准入具有重要影响。住房所有权是这种不平等的一个基本要素，对遭受犯罪的风险、公共安全服务质量以及获得医疗保健、教育和就业机会都有广泛影响。基于早期倾向于关注特定形式抵押贷款的学术研究，我们在本文中借鉴了来自美国最大的100个大都市区的140多万份不同的抵押贷款申请，以审视种族/族裔在以下方面的差异：（1）所有房屋类型（移动房屋、公寓、多户/单户住宅），（2）所有留置权持有人（私人/政府支持），（3）所有用途（度假/租赁/自住），以及（4）所有买家贷款序列（购买、再融资、房屋净值/改善）。我们利用多层次建模进行的分析揭示了非裔美国人和西班牙裔在不同时间的持久不平等，以及非西班牙裔白人和亚裔美国申请人的优势。在少数族裔高度集中地区寻求住房的人也存在这种劣势，尽管这种影响似乎因申请人的种族/族裔而异。具体而言，抵押贷款发放虽然在少数族裔高度集中的地区通常不太可能，但在少数族裔集中度日益增加的地区，黑人/西班牙裔借款人获得抵押贷款发放的可能性似乎更大。我们得出结论，抵押贷款仍然是种族/族裔不平等中一个严重存在问题的方面，对持续的隔离、财富差距以及优势/劣势的代际传递具有重要影响。
