An important topic in the study of segregation are comparisons across space and time. This article extends current approaches in segregation measurement by presenting a five-term decomposition procedure that can be used to understand more clearly why segregation has changed or differs between two comparison points. Two of the five terms account for differences in segregation that are due to the differing marginal distributions (e.g., the gender and occupational distributions), while one term accounts for differences in segregation due the different structure of segregation (what might be termed “pure” segregation). The decomposition thus presents a solution to the problem of margin dependency, frequently discussed in the segregation literature. Finally, two terms account for the appearance or disappearance of units when analyzing change over time. The method can be further extended to attribute structural changes to individual units, which makes it possible, for instance, to quantify the effect of each occupation on changing gender^* segregation. The practical advantages of the decomposition are illustrated by two examples: a study of changing occupational gender segregation in the United States and a study of changing residential segregation in Brooklyn, New York.

隔离研究中的一个重要主题是跨时空比较。本文通过提出一个五项分解程序扩展了当前的隔离测量方法，该程序可以用来更清楚地理解为什么两个比较点之间的隔离发生了变化或不同。五个术语中的两个解释了由于边际分布不同（例如，性别和职业分布）而导致的种族隔离差异，而一个术语则解释了由于种族隔离结构不同而造成的种族隔离差异（可以称为“纯”隔离）。因此，分解提供了解决隔离性文献中经常讨论的边距依赖性问题的方法。最后，当分析随时间变化时，有两个术语解释了单元的出现或消失。^*隔离。通过两个例子说明了分解的实际优势：对美国职业性别隔离的改变的研究和对纽约布鲁克林地区居民隔离的改变的研究。