Multi-Scale Analysis of the Effects of Socio-Spatial Segregation

The variable "space" is increasingly being used by scholars in the social sciences. In this sense, the methods that use spatial analysis are becoming more known by social scientists. One of the most important applications of the use of spatial analysis in sociology, demography and population studies is the socio-spatial segregation. Some countries are studying the spatial concentration of the population with respect to race/color, but in others, such as Brazil, the miscegenation of the population is high, and so it makes no sense to study segregation by this variable. In this case, the income of the person can be the key variable in this process. Spatial analysis techniques, such as isolation indexes, are then used to analyze the spatial segregation according to income, translated by poverty or wealth. However, in each geographical unit (scale) used, the result of the analysis may be different. Then, the main goal of this paper is to create a multi-scale analysis of the effects of segregation in terms of isolation of poverty and wealth indicators. Our assumption is that when we increase the scale of the segregation analysis, the inequalities also increase. And this is what we attempt to show with this paper, using data from census tracts of 2010 for the city of São Paulo, the most populated in Brazil.