These Kentucky cities are among the least racially diverse in the U.S., study says

Lexington and Louisville are more diverse than they were a decade ago, but they are still far behind the rest of the country, according to a new study by U.S. News & World Report.

Kentucky’s two largest cities are among the five-least diverse big cities in the U.S., the analysis shows. Only El Paso and Detroit are less diverse than Lexington, which is the third-least diverse big city in the rankings. Louisville is the fifth-least diverse of the cities ranked, slotted behind Portland, Oregon.

But while the two Kentucky cities fall in the bottom of the analysis, they are more racially and ethnically diverse than they were in 2010. The U.S. News study shows a 3.20 percent increase in Lexington’s diversity index, which measures the chance that two people randomly chosen are of a different race or ethnicity.

Of Lexington’s 323,780 residents in 2018, 76.62 percent were white and 15.16 percent were black. The white, black and Asian populations all grew since 2010 in Lexington, though the American Indian population decreased by more than half, according to U.S. News

There was also a 74.9 percent increase since 2010 in Lexington residents who were multiple races. The study shows that in Lexington in 2018, there was a 47.2 percent chance two randomly-chosen people were of a different race or ethnicity, while it’s 50.8 percent chance in Louisville.

The diversity index in Louisville grew 2.95 percent since 2010, as the city’s Asian, American Indian and Hispanic populations all increased by at least 19 percent.

Kentucky joined Texas as the only two states with multiple cities among the 10-least racially and ethnically diverse large cities in the country. That list includes El Paso and Corpus Christi, which ranked 57th out of the 66 cities in terms of diversity.

Lexington was also the third least-diverse large city in the country, according to WalletHub in 2017 and 2018,

Almost 70 percent of large cities have grown more diverse since 2010, the findings released Wednesday show.

“There is a rapid increase in diversity among younger people and children,” Mark Mather, a demographer with the nonprofit Population Reference Bureau, told U.S. News. “That is really what’s driving this increase in racial ethnic diversity in large cities.”

To reach its findings, U.S. News says it used a diversity index and census data to evaluate the 66 most-populated cities that had a population of more than 300,000 people.

Overall, the highest diversity ranking went to the central California city of Stockton, U.S. News says. The city with the biggest jump in diversity was Detroit, while Miami saw the biggest decrease, according to the study.

This story was originally published January 22, 2020 at 12:53 PM.