The Nexus Between Occupational and Residential Segregation

Abstract

In this Chapter, we analyse occupational segregation of Latin American men and women in conjunction with their residential segregation at national level as well as for the metropolitan provinces of Madrid and Barcelona. Given the small sample sizes of occupational data at sub-national level, we employ Iterative Proportional Fitting to adjust these to the national counts so that more reliable analysis of occupational segregation at sub-national level can be undertaken over the study period (2000–2010). We find that while residential segregation tends to decrease over time for both men and women, occupational segregation has increased during the same period, particularly among women. The results also highlight a negative correlation between occupational and residential segregation for both men and women, thus suggesting the existence of a multidimensional problem which demands specific target policies, particularly in the labour market realm.