Why It’s So Hard to Measure Residential Displacement

If there’s anywhere to spot signs of residential displacement, it should be England—birthplace of the term gentrification. The anecdotal evidence of working-class folks getting priced out of their London homes is enough to fill billboards. And since the U.K. has less residential mobility than the U.S., it’s presumably easier for data snoops to discern the signal of displacement from the statistical noise of general neighborhood turnover.

A trio of Columbia University planning scholars set out on just such a study using national migration data gathered between 1991 and 2009. The basic idea was to see whether low-income or working-class residents were more likely to leave gentrifying neighborhoods than to move out of non-gentrifying areas over time, with gentrification defined as a big leap in the amount of residents holding white-collar jobs or advanced degrees. The researchers analyzed movements across England and Wales as a whole, as well as Greater London in particular.