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Title: ESSAYS ON RACIAL RESIDENTIAL SEGREGATION, SUBURBANIZATION AND BLACK UNEMPLOYMENT
Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis
Publication Year: 2012
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Abstract: This dissertation can broadly be categorized into two parts. The first part analyzes the causes of racial residential segregation, and the second focuses on its consequences. In the first part of my dissertation, I attempt to analyze whether population suburbanization causes racial residential segregation. The key contribution of this paper to the existing literature is the implementation of instrumental variable regression in order to identify the direction of causality between the two. Population suburbanization is instrumented with the number of highways running through central cities of metropolitan areas in the 1947 highway plan. Estimation results suggest that population suburbanization has caused U.S. metropolitan areas to be more residentially segregated. Had there been no suburbanization between 1960 and 2000, racial residential segregation on average would have declined by about 4 percentage points more than what is observed in the data. The second part of my dissertation analyzes the impact of racial residential segregation on black employment outcome in U.S. metropolitan areas. In particular, this paper re-examines the spatial mismatch hypothesis. The main contribution of this research to the previous literature is to test the spatial mismatch hypothesis in an intertemporal framework. Using decadal census data from 1970 to 2000 in a panel setting, the study allows us to test the persistence of the spatial mismatch problem. Causal estimates from the instrumental variables regression suggest that although racial residential segregation adversely affected black employment outcome in the 1970s and 1980s, the effect is not significant for 1990 and 2000. Furthermore, racial residential integration does not significantly improve the employment outcomes for prime-aged low-skilled blacks. On the other hand, decentralization of manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade (MWR) jobs significantly affects the unemployment rate for low-skilled blacks. For the panel regression, a one standard deviation fall in central city employment in these industries raises low-skilled black unemployment rate by 1.9 percentage points. However, it is not likely that this effect is disproportionately greater for MSAs with higher levels of residential segregation. Results obtained in this paper indicate that improvement in job accessibility does not significantly improve the employment outcomes for low-skilled blacks. If labor demand shifts away from the industries hiring low-skilled laborers, which in fact happened over the past few decades, then it would lower their employment rates even if those jobs are accessible. In that case, any low-skilled laborer irrespective of race would face unemployment problems arising from such shifts. But if there is racial discrimination in employment, then it would hurt the blacks more than other nonminority group even in the absence of skill or spatial mismatch.
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Authors: Chatterjee, Boishampayan
Institution: Clark University
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Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Race and Ethnicity
Countries: United States