The truly isolated: Spatial isolation of advantage in the United States

For decades, the social isolation of disadvantaged groups has been a leading explanation for urban inequality. Yet, empirical studies of social isolation have historically been limited to residential contexts, and further, they have typically neglected to consider isolation among advantaged groups. Building on recent data advances, we use large-scale daily mobility data collected across the United States in 2019 to describe patterns of spatial isolation, defined as the extent to which individuals live their lives surrounded by ingroup members, for various segments of the population. The results show that spatial isolation is highest among advantaged ethnoracial and income groups, a finding that aligns with recent research and provides a challenge to the longstanding assumption that social isolation is most pronounced in areas of concentrated disadvantage. Further, the results underline the extent to which mobility contributes to differential exposure to environments of opportunity and risk for various groups, suggesting that mobility-based isolation may play an important role in the production of persistent urban inequality.