Despite the resurgence of interest in the neighborhood as a dimension of stratification, fundamental questions about continuity and change in families' residential environments remain unanswered. This study draws on the extensive literature on economic and social mobility in America to examine contextual mobility, defined as the extent to which inequalities in neighborhood environments persist over the life course and across generations. Using two data sources that track individuals' neighborhood environments as they change over time—the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics—I analyze the persistence and transmission of neighborhood environments, and the processes by which neighborhood inequality is generated and maintained.

Findings suggest that the neighborhood is an extremely rigid dimension of stratification. I find that racial inequalities in the neighborhood environment are likely to persist over individual lifetimes and across successive generations of family members. In particular, Black Americans are extremely unlikely to advance out of America's poorest neighborhoods over time. Neighborhood poverty during childhood and change in neighborhood conditions during young adulthood are found to have lasting effects on the economic trajectories of Black Americans. Together, these results suggest that the persistence of neighborhood disadvantage in the lives of black families represents a fundamental, and enduring, dimension of racial inequality in America.