Traces of Historical Redlining in the Contemporary United States: New Evidence from the Add Health Cohort

Research on the legacies of historical redlining has lacked nationally representative and multilevel data. We advance this literature by analyzing new data that links historical redlining maps to the residential addresses of participants in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), a diverse and national cohort of adolescents who transitioned to adulthood between the mid-1990s and late 2010s (N = 10,897). We report three key findings. First, while most participants did not live within the boundaries of historical redlining maps, Black (22%) and Hispanic (28%) participants were several times more likely than their White peers (8%) to live in either a formerly yellow- or red-lined urban area in adolescence. Second, adolescents who resided in yellow- or red-lined areas also tended to live in the most disadvantaged households and neighborhoods and attained the lowest levels of socioeconomic status in adulthood. Third, Black and White adolescents who lived in rural areas also experienced similar or worse adult outcomes than their peers who lived in redlined urban areas. We also find anomalous but inconclusive patterns for the small group of Black and Hispanic participants who lived in historically affluent “green-lined” areas in adolescence, including poor adult health and high risk of contact with the criminal justice system. Given these findings, we outline avenues for future research that could include historical redlining maps, but also expand beyond urban redlining to consider nonmetropolitan areas and other contemporary indicators of structural racism.