Factors Influencing the Residential Location of Female Householders

Abstract

Currently, 25% of all households are headed by females. Although 75% of all female householders are urban dwellers, few investigations have examined factors contributing to their centralization. This study focused on the dynamics of residential location among female householders living in one-person, two-or-more person family, and nonfamily configurations. A path model was designed and evaluated that examined the relationships among such variables as tract distance from the central business district (CBD), proportion of structures in the tract built before 1950, tract density, urban! suburban tract designation, median rent per tract, proportion of elderly householders and black householders per tract for each of the female householder groups. The results suggest that female-headed households live close to the CBD, in urban and densely populated tracts, in pre-1950 buildings, and in lower rent units and that socioeconomic and spatial organization factors impact differently on the residential location of each of the household configurations considered.