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Title: The Long-run Economic Effects of School Desegregation

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2019

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Abstract: I estimate the effect of school desegregation on long-run economic outcomes by studying a natural experiment in Jefferson County, KY. In 1975, the district, under a court order, developed a unique busing assignment plan to merge the majority-white County district and the majority-black City district. Under this plan, students were assigned to be bused to new schools (versus stay at their home school and have new students bused in) based on their race and the first letter of their last name. Using this plausibly conditional random as- signment and confidential data from the US Census Bureau, I find black students assigned busing to former County schools live in better neighborhoods (e.g. neighborhoods with higher tract-level income) at adulthood than black students assigned to remain in former City schools. This effect is strongest for students bused in earlier grades and is increasing in the total number of years a student is assigned busing. Busing assignment has small to zero effect on white students. I explore the implications of white disenrollment from the district (i.e. “white flight”) by using a novel dataset of archival yearbook records. I find the effect for white students remains small even after preliminary accounting for disenrollment. These results suggest that school desegregation in this setting had positive long-run effects for black students by giving them access to better schools (e.g. schools with more capital investment, more credentialed teachers, lower drop-out rates, etc.).

Url: http://econweb.umd.edu/~tuttle/files/tuttle_busing.pdf

User Submitted?: No

Authors: Tuttle, Cody

Publisher: University of Maryland

Data Collections: IPUMS NHGIS

Topics: Education, Race and Ethnicity

Countries: United States