By just about every measure, life is significantly better for African-Americans and Latinos in small and medium-sized cities and towns in the South and West, according to a recently released report by Urban Institute.

The Washington, DC-based think tank found that the "opportunity gap" that separates African-Americans and Latinos from whites is the largest in the Midwest and Northeast and the smallest in the South and West.

Its study examined factors such as residential segregation, the quality of public schools, neighborhood home values, employment rates and rates of home ownership.

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The panel drew its talking points from this exhaustive report "The Black Population: 2010," which aggregated nearly a years' worth of Census data.

"A lot of what that may be showing is upward mobility," said Dr. Roderick Harrison, of the growing number of black Americans moving to the suburbs. Harrison is a demographer who teaches at Howard University and senior research fellow at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, DC.

"The declines in central cities reflect people moving out from cities like DC, from the poorest areas... to suburban communities that people may perceive to offer better education, safer neighborhoods, better amenities, etc."


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