Causes and Consequences of Racial Segregation
Paper Session
Saturday, Jan. 7, 2023 2:30 PM - 4:30 PM (CST)
- Chair: Stephen Redding, Princeton University
The Effects of Racial Segregation on Intergenerational Mobility: Evidence from Historical Railroad Placement
Abstract
This paper provides new evidence on the causal impacts of city-wide racial segregation on intergenerational mobility. We use an instrumental variable approach that relies on plausibly exogenous variation in segregation due to the arrangement of railroad tracks in the nineteenth century (Ananat, 2011). Our analysis finds that higher levels of segregation reduce upward mobility for Black children from households across the income distribution and white children from lower-income households. The decline in upward mobility arises from both causal place and sorting channels. Moreover, segregation lowers primary school test scores and increases incarceration rates, teenage birth rates, and racially conservative attitudes.Long Shadow of Racial Discrimination History: Evidence from Housing Covenants
Abstract
Racial covenants were clauses in property deeds that prohibited the sale or renting of a property to specific religious and ethnic minorities. This paper studies the effect of racially-restrictive covenants, prevalent during the early-to-mid 20th century, on present-day socioeconomic outcomes such as house prices and racial segregation. Using newly created geographic data on over 120,000 historical property deeds with information on racial covenant use from Hennepin County, Minnesota, we exploit the unanticipated 1948 Supreme Court ruling that made racially-restrictive covenants unenforceable. We employ a regression discontinuity around the ruling to document the causal and time-persistent effects of racial covenants on the present-day socioeconomic geography of Minneapolis and its suburbs. In particular, we document that houses that were covenanted have on average 3.4% higher present-day house values compared to properties that were not covenanted. We also find a 1% increase in covenanted houses in census blocks reduces Black residents by 14% and reduces Black homeownership by 19%.Infrastructures of Race? Colonial Indigenous Zoning and Contemporaneous Urban Segregation
Abstract
We study how colonial spatial segregation persists and evolves for centuries in a nation that transforms from being ethnically segmented to predominantly multiracial: Mexico. After the conquest of Mesoamerica, Spaniards segregated natives in settlements, Pueblos de Indios. By the end of colonial times, there were two types of settlements: Pueblos with Indigenous inhabitants only and Pueblos with populations of diverse ancestry. Both types of Pueblos emerged into modern urban areas. To estimate the impacts of colonial segregation on modern Mexican cities, we combine an instrumental variable design with a novel spatial first-differences approach to address selection and spatially correlated unobserved heterogeneity. We find that urban areas closer to segregated Pueblos have lower levels of human capital relative to blocks near Pueblos with multi-ancestry individuals. While segregated Pueblos do not lead to modern agglomerations of Indigenous individuals, mixed-race individuals with darker skin tones gather around former Indigenous-Only Pueblos. Our findings suggest that colonial segregation policies were transmitted over centuries from Indigenous to multiracial individuals through the urban space.Discussant(s)
Leah Boustan
,
Princeton University
Elizabeth Ananat
,
Columbia University
Matthew Turner
,
Brown University
Nathaniel Baum-Snow
,
University of Toronto
JEL Classifications
- R3 - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location
- N3 - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy