“Los Angeles was a big, complex immigrant metropolis and representative of the spirit and political dilemmas of our age — of the late Reagan era,” Ethington said. That moment, both in time and place, “was an important site in global history to account for. So I wanted to do that — address that ‘why?’ But I knew that the city is so vast … That it can’t be easily explained. So you have to attack it from many directions and disciplines.”

“These findings suggest that the news of overall static trends must be interpreted cautiously and underscore the need for understanding the drivers of these socioeconomic differences,” Datar wrote with UCLA researcher Paul Chung.