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American Economic Review Vol. 101 No. 7 2011

School Desegregation, School Choice, and Changes in Residential Location Patterns by Race

Nathaniel Baum-Snow1; Byron Lutz2

1 Brown University, Department of Economics, Box B, Providence, RI 02912, and NBER. · 2 Federal Reserve Board, Research Division, Stop # 83, 20th and C Sts. NW, Washington, DC 20551-0001.

Abstract

This paper examines the residential location and school choice responses to the desegregation of large urban public school districts. We decompose the well documented decline in white public enrollment following desegregation into migration to suburban districts and increased private school enrollment, and find that migration was the more prevalent response. Desegregation caused black public enrollment to increase significantly outside of the South, mostly by slowing decentralization of black households to the suburbs, and large black private school enrollment declines in southern districts. Central district school desegregation generated only a small portion of overall urban population decentralization between 1960 and 1990.

DOI
10.1257/aer.101.7.3019
Volume
101
Issue
7
Pages
3019-3046
Language
en
Sources
openalex bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref

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