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Title: Social interactions and racial inequality

Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis

Publication Year: 2017

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Abstract: A large body of evidence suggests that social interactions causally influence individuals’ economic decisions (e.g. Duflo and Saez, 2003; Bayer, Ross and Topa, 2008; Dahl, Loken and Mogstad, 2014). This finding implies that differences in the social environment faced by members of different races - in particular, differences in social norms and in the characteristics of social networks - may help perpetuate racial inequality. In this dissertation, I present two papers that attempt to understand how these differences in the social environment are created and reinforced. In the first chapter, I assess the influence of media role models on black educational attainment by examining the impact of a popular 1980’s sitcom: The Cosby Show. The show portrayed an upper-middle class black family, and frequently emphasized the importance of a college education. If role model effects exist, young black people should have responded more strongly to this message. I test this hypothesis by relating educational attainment to city-level Cosby ratings, using Thursday NBA games and very warm Thursdays as instruments. I find that Cosby increased years of education by 0.2-5.0% among black youth, but had no effect on white youth. In the second chapter, I examine a determinant of social segregation by race in the United States: physical distance. Because U.S. cities are highly segregated, the time cost of interacting with a member of another race is typically higher than the cost of interacting with a same-race friend. My goal in this chapter is to quantitatively assess the importance of this channel in explaining why people typically interact with members of their own race. I argue that the causal effect of distance on social interactions is captured by consumers’ distaste for travel. Based on external estimates of this parameter, I simulate the frequency of cross-racial interactions that would occur if only distance mattered in determining individuals’ choice of interaction partners. I compare the simulation results to a new measure of the actual frequency of inter-racial interactions based on Flickr photographs. I estimate that 25-30% of social segregation for whites in the U.S. is attributable to physical distance alone.

Url: https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/80771/3/Cornelson_Kirsten_201711_PhD_thesis.pdf

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Authors: Cornelson, Kirsten

Institution: University of Toronto

Department: Graduate Department of Economics

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Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Housing and Segregation, Race and Ethnicity

Countries: United States