What is the difference between a "ghetto" and a "slum"?

What is the difference between a ghetto and a slum?

A slum is characterized by its run-down status, while a ghetto is characterized by the people who live there. Both usually mean some degree of poverty, being overcrowded, and having high crime rates.

Historically, a ghetto would be a place to put groups such as immigrants, Jews or black people, who weren't allowed to live anywhere else. Nowadays the reasons are mostly economical and cultural; people can't afford to live wherever they like, and choose to live among others with similar background.

A ghetto doesn't have to be particularly poor, some Chinatowns for example can be called ghettos even though they are not really slums. Sometimes, "slum ghetto" is used to clarify both the ethnic grouping and the poverty of an area.

Originally, yes, but people not aware of the history use them interchangeably now.

The word ghetto was used to refer to a concentration of a particular ethnicity into a single neighborhood. In Poland during WWII Jews were forced to live in communities where they did not mix with others. In the United States this term was used to describe the ethnically-centered neighborhoods in the big cities.

A slum is a very low income area marked by poor living conditions, sometimes crime.

Some ghettos became slums and so now the two ideas have intertwined in the minds of many.

In a ghetto you will find people of the same race/socio-economic status/etc. While today indistinguishable from a slum, from a historical perspective, a ghetto was meant as a separate part of a society where 'certain' people were moved (as for instance the Warsaw ghetto for Jews during WWII). A slum, on the other hand, is merely a very poor neighborhood.