William A. V. Clark
William A. V. Clark
Emeriti
Emeriti Faculty
Office: 1255 BUNCHE
Email: WCLARK@GEOG.UCLA.EDU
Phone: 51071
Biography
William Clark is Research Professor of Geography at UCLA and an active affiliate of the California Population Center. He was born in New Zealand and earned BA and MA degrees from the University of New Zealand and a PhD in Geography from the University of Illinois. He was a fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences in 1993, and held a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1994-95. In 1994 he was awarded a D.Sc. by the University of Auckland, New Zealand.
He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand and in 2003 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2005 he was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences and in that year he also received the Decade of Behavior Research Award for research that influences public policy. In the past ten years he has lectured and taught in Europe, New Zealand and Canada and in 2011 held an UK Economic and Social Research Council Fellowship at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. He was a Benjamin Meaker Research Fellow, at Bristol University, United Kingdom in 2014. At the Association of American Geographers meetings in 2018 he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award.
His research focuses on mobility, migration and housing choice and housing outcomes. Each of these areas continues his long term interest in demographic change in large urban areas. He has published extensively on models of residential mobility and the sorting processes that bring about residential segregation in the urban mosaic His research is focused on how demographic changes and specifically the spatial outcomes of both internal and international population migration change neighborhoods. The edited volume, with David Clapham and Ken Gibb (The Sage Handbook of Housing, 2012) brings together work on residential change, housing choice, housing markets and policy issues on the future of housing. A forthcoming book reviews recent research in Housing Studies.
His studies of immigration and its impacts both on places and on the immigrants themselves are set out in two books, The California Cauldron: Immigration and the Fortunes of Local Communities and Immigrants and the American Dream: Remaking the Middle Class. The California Cauldron focuses on the impact of immigration on California, and Immigrants and the American Dream examines how immigrants have transformed themselves as their life courses intersect with the American mainstream. Both examine the way in which immigrants change local communities and how they succeed in their life course trajectories.
His research has provided insights into the role of preferences, discrimination and public intervention in creating the ethnic and racial separation in America’s large urban regions. He published some of the first papers to formally test the 1971 Schelling model of choice. The papers showed that the theoretical tolerance distributions outlined by Schelling theoretically could be generated from survey data. Most recently the Schelling model was translated into an agent based model with survey preferences as the basis for the predicted outcomes.
He has participated as analyst and expert witness in the major desegregation court cases which took up the question of how we can understand the patterns of ethnic and racial separation in large US cities. The presentations and discussions were often contentious but they were an opportunity to bring demographic analysis into the court room and test the ideas about segregation and separation in both a demographic and a legal context. These presentations in Dowell (Oklahoma), Pitts v Freeman (Georgia), Swann vs Charlotte-Mecklenburg, and Jenkins (Kansas City) were based on demographic research on residential sorting and residential selection using surveys and demographic models.
Education
B.A. University of New Zealand, 1960
M.A. (First Class Honors) University of New Zealand, 1961
Ph.D. University of Illinois, 1964
D.Sc. University of Auckland, 1994
Research
My research over the past two decades has been concerned with the internal changes in US cities, especially in the changes that occur in response to residential mobility and migration. I have conducted both micro scale and individual studies of tenure choice, and large scale studies of demographic change in the neighborhoods of large metropolitan areas. The latter studies examine the nature of the population flows between cities and suburbs, white flight and the impact of legal intervention on the urban mosaic. I have also been particularly concerned about the relative roles of residential preferences and housing affordability in the way in which segregation has emerged in metropolitan areas. I am currently investigating the interaction of class, race and geography in metropolitan areas, as well as continuing my studies of how residential sorting structures the urban landscape.
Selected Publications
SIGNIFICANT SCIENTIFIC CONTRIBUTIONS
Research Articles
Over the past four decades I have pursued research in three areas – first, studies of housing choices, and as part of those investigations how the life course paradigm helps us understand both the choice of whether to become an owner and where to live; second, the analysis of patterns of segregation and their explanations including studies of the relative roles of status and preferences as explanations for the patterns we see in the urban landscape; and third, studies of migration and mobility and labor force participation.
Housing choices, residential mobility and residential sorting
The important papers within the research on residential choice include studies of tenure choice, summarized in a 1996 book Households and Housing: Choice and Outcomes in the Housing market. Rutgers University, Center for Urban Policy Research, and a series of recent papers which examine the decision to move and the decision to stay. Using a life course conceptual structure a book, and a set of papers show that households change residential locations in response to a series of internal and external triggers. The underlying conceptualization of the work on mobility and choice is the central concept that housing decisions are related to progress through the life course . At a macro level the research documents how choices and constraints generate residential selection and neighborhood sorting.
W.A.V. Clark and Suzanne Davies Withers (2007) Family migration and mobility sequences in the United States: spatial mobility in the context of the life course. Demographic Research 17, Number 20, 591-622.
W.A.V. Clark (2013) Life course events and residential change: unpacking age effects on the probability of moving Journal of Population Research 30, 319-334.
W.A.V. Clark and Philip Morrison (2012) Socio-spatial mobility and residential sorting: evidence from a large scale survey. Urban Studies 49, 3253-3270.
W.A.V. Clark and Regan Maas (2015) Interpreting migration through the prism of reasons for moves. Population Space and Place 21 54-67 ONLINE 2013
W.A.V. Clark, Ricardo Duque, Isabel Palomares (2015) Place attachment and the decision to stay in the neighborhood. Population Space and Place. DOI: 10.1002/psp.2001
W.A. V. Clark & William Lisowski (2016): Decisions to move and decisions to stay: life course events and mobility outcomes, Housing Studies, DOI:10.1080/02673037.2016.1210100
W.A.V. Clark and William Lisowski (2017) Prospect Theory and the decision to move or stay. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
W.A.V. Clark and William Lisowski (2017) Examining the life course sequence of intending to move and moving. Population, Space and Place. Online
Patterns of segregation and the social organization of the city
theoretical tolerance distributions outlined by Schelling in his study of preference could be generated from survey data. Additional work showed that preferences varied by education, income and age. Most recently the Schelling model has been translated into an agent based model with survey preferences as the basis for the predicted outcomes. More recent collaborative research has both extended studies of segregation and developed new methods of measuring segregation.
W.A.V. Clark (1991) Residential preferences and neighborhood racial segregation: a test of the Schelling segregation model. Demography 28, 1-19.
W.A.V. Clark(1992) Residential Preferences and Residential Choices in a Multi Ethnic Context. Demography 30, 451-466.
W.A. V. Clark (2009) Changing Residential Preferences across Income, Education, and Age: Findings from the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality. Urban Affairs Review 44: 334-355
W.A.V. Clark and Mark Fossett (2008) Understanding the social context of the Schelling segregation model. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105,4109-4114.
John Osth, William A.V. Clark and Bo Malmberg (2014) Measuring the scale of segregation using K-nearest neighborhood aggregates. Geographical Analysis 46 , 1-16
W.A.V. Clark and John Östh (2018) Measuring Isolation Across Space And Over Time With New Tools: Evidence From California Metropolitan Regions. Environment and Planning B. Special Issue: Conceptualizing, Modelling, and Visualizing Residential Segregation
Olteanu, M. Randon-Furling, J. and Clark, WAV (2019) Segregation through the multiscalar lens: focal distances and distortion coefficients” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesj June 18, vol. 116 no. 25 12250–12254
Malmberg, Bo and Clark W.A.V. (2020) Migration and neighborhood change in Sweden: The interaction of ethnic choice and income constraints. Geographical Analysis online.
W.A.V. Clark, Madalina Olteanu Julien Randon –Furling (2019) Segregation beyond scale: assessing the individual perceptions of migrant residential segregation. 21st European Colloquium on Theoretical and Quantitative Geography p.95-96
Xu B, Clark WAV, Pak M Simulation codes and data for the data analysis. URL: LINK. Deposited 19 January 2024.
Residential mobility, migration and labor market outcomes
A large research literature has focused on migration as the engine of job search. The view from economics emphasizes the process of migration as one which is motivated by job opportunities and wage gains. While there is some support for those studies it is increasingly clear that migration is much more than a search for jobs and in the complex world of two earner families, and high levels of labor force participation by women, there is a need to rethink the explanations for regional migration and residential mobility. It is also clear that average outcomes do not provide a realistic picture of the gains from migration.
W.A.V.Clark and S.Davies Withers (1999) Changing jobs and changing houses: mobility outcomes of employment transitions. Journal of Regional Science 39, 653-673
W.A.V. Clark and Y. Huang (2004) Linking migration and mobility: individual and contextual effects in British Housing Markets. Regional Studies 38, 617-628.
W.A.V.Clark and Y.Huang (2006) Balancing move and work: Women’s labor market exits and entrances after migration. Population Space and Place 12,31-44)
W,A.V. Clark and Suzanne Davies Withers (2009) Family Formation, Mobility And Labor Force Participation: A Study in Synchronicity. Population Space and Place 15, 305-321
W.A.V. Clark and Regan Maas (2015) Interpreting migration through the prism of reasons for moves. Population Space and Place 21 54-67 ONLINE 2013
Martin Korpi and W.A.V. Clark (2015) Internal Migration and Human Capital Theory: To What Extent Is It Selective? Economic Letters 136:31-34.
Martin Korpi and W.A.V. Clark (2017) Human capital theory and internal migration: Do average outcomes distort our view of migrant motives? Migration Letters. 14: 229-242.
Martin Korpi and W. A.V. Clark (2017) Migration and Occupational Careers: The Static and Dynamic Urban Wage Premium by Education and City Size” Papers in Regional Science. Online
William A.V. Clark and William Lisowski (2019) Extending the human capital model of migration: The role of risk, place and social capital in the migration decision. Population, Space and Place. Online DOI org/10.1002/psp2225
Current Projects
In the past three years I have explored the application of my life course approaches to housing and residential choice in the large and transforming Chinese housing market, including studies of access, subjective wellbeing and fertility.
W.A.V. Clark, Youqin Huang and Daichun Yi (2019) Can Millennials Access Homeownership in Urban China. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment.
W.A.V.Clark, Daichun Yi, and Youqin Huang (2019) Subjective wellbeing in China’s Changing Society. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116 (34) 16799-16,804.
W.A.V.Clark, Daichun Yi (2020) Transitions to partnership and parenthood: Is China still traditional. Demographic Research, 7/24.
W.A.V.Clark, Daichun Yi and Xin Zang (2020) Do house prices affect fertility behavior in China: An empirical examination. International Regional Science Review.
Books
W.A.V. Clark (2021) Advanced Introduction to Housing Studies. Elgar (Forthcoming)
David Clapham, William A.V. Clark and Kenneth Gibb (2012) The Sage Handbook of Housing. London, UK. Sage Publications
W.A.V. Clark (2003) Immigrants and the American Dream: Remaking the Middle Class. New York: Guilford Press
W.A.V. Clark (1998) The California Cauldron: Immigration and the Fortunes of Local Communities. New York: Guilford Press.
W.A.V. Clark, F.M. Dieleman (1996) Households and Housing: Choice and Outcomes in the Housing market. Rutgers University, Center for Urban Policy Research.
W.A.V. Clark (1986) Human Migration: An Introduction to Population Movement. Sage Publications.
W.A.V. Clark and P.L. Hosking (1986) Statistical Methods for Geographers. John Wiley and Sons.
W.A.V. Clark, ed. (1982) Modelling Housing Market Search. London, United Kingdom: Croom Helm.
W.A.V. Clark and Eric G. Moore, eds. (1980) Residential Mobility and Public Policy, Beverly Hills, Sage Publications.
W.A.V. Clark and E.G. Moore, eds. (1978) Population Mobility and Residential Change. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
H.J. Nelson and W.A.V. Clark (1976) The Los Angeles Metropolitan Experience: Uniqueness, Generality and the Goal of the Good Life. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger.
Grants & Awards
Honors Award of the Association of American Geographers in 1987;
Belle van Zuylen Professorship of the University of Utrecht in 1989,
Doctorem Honoris Causis, University of Utrecht in 1992;
Fellow of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences 1993;
John Simon Guggenheim fellowship 1994-95;
Elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand 1997.
Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 2003
Elected to the US National Academy of Sciences, 2005
New Zealand Geographic Society, Distinguished New Zealand Geographer Medal, 2015.
