We examine how living in minority neighborhoods affects the ease of access to conventional banks vs. to alternative financial institutions, such as check cashers and payday lenders, which some have called predatory. Results suggest that race is strikingly more important than class: even after numerous conditions are accounted for, the AFI is more often closer than the bank in well-off minority neighborhoods than in poor white ones.
Dr. Mario Small: Banks, alternative institutions, and the spatial-temporal ecology of racial inequality