Systemic Race
Legal Activism, State Policy, and Racial Inequality in Teacher Salaries and Educational Attainment in the Mid-Century American South
Elizabeth Cascio & Ethan Lewis
NBER Working Paper, November 2022
Abstract:
In the late 1930s, the NAACP launched a campaign to equalize Black and white teacher salaries in the de jure segregated schools of the American South. Using newly collected county panel data spanning three decades, this paper first documents heterogeneous within-state impacts of the campaign on teacher salaries. In states that reinforced successful NAACP litigation by introducing universal minimum salary schedules based on objective criteria, the relatively large wage penalty historically suffered by Black teachers in districts with higher Black enrollment shares disappeared by the mid-1950s. In states that resisted by adopting salary schedules using the National Teacher Examination as a measure of teaching efficacy, that penalty remained. In the second part of the paper, we estimate the effect of teacher pay on educational attainment exploiting variation in Black salary gains over time across counties with different Black enrollment shares, and across states by whether subsequent state policy reinforced or resisted court rulings favorable to the NAACP. We find that Black teacher salary gains contributed to the large reductions in racial inequality in school enrollment and grade progression in the South at mid-century.
How Much Does Racial Bias Affect Mortgage Lending? Evidence from Human and Algorithmic Credit Decisions
Neil Bhutta, Aurel Hizmo & Daniel Ringo
Federal Reserve Working Paper, August 2022
Abstract:
We assess racial discrimination in mortgage approvals using new data on mortgage applications. Minority applicants tend to have significantly lower credit scores, higher leverage, and are less likely than white applicants to receive algorithmic approval from race-blind government automated underwriting systems (AUS). Observable applicant- risk factors explain most of the racial disparities in lender denials. Further, we exploit the AUS data to show there are risk factors we do not directly observe, and our analysis indicates that these factors explain at least some of the residual 1-2 percentage point denial gaps. Overall, we find that differential treatment has played a limited role in generating denial disparities in recent years.
The Impact of Land Use Regulation on Racial Segregation: Evidence from Massachusetts Zoning Borders
Matthew Resseger
George Mason University Working Paper, October 2022
Abstract:
Local zoning regulations such as minimum lot size requirements and restrictions on the permitting of multifamily housing may exacerbate racial segregation by reducing in some neighborhoods the construction of units that could house prospective minority residents. Although this hypothesis has long been recognized by urban economists and other social scientists, the lack of uniform land use data across jurisdictions has made empirical progress difficult. Using detailed spatial data available for all municipalities in Massachusetts, I investigate the impact of density zoning regulation on location choices by race. Capitalizing on the geographic detail in the data, I focus on variation in block-level racial composition within narrow bands around zone borders within jurisdictions, mitigating omitted variable concerns that arise in studies focusing on larger geographic units. My results imply a large role for local zoning regulation, particularly the permitting of dense multifamily structures, in explaining disparate racial location patterns. Blocks zoned for multifamily housing have black population shares 3.4 percentage points higher and Hispanic population shares 5.5 percentage points higher than single-family zoned blocks directly across a border from them. A simulation based on these results suggests that equalizing zoning density regulation across the Boston metro area would lower segregation by half a standard deviation of the national distribution on the most common measure.
Single-Family Zoning and Race: Evidence from the Twin Cities
Salim Furth
George Mason University Working Paper, October 2022
Abstract:
A new wave of activism and research has renewed critiques of single-family zoning as a means of racial exclusion. To test this argument, we assemble digital zoning data covering the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area and quantify the relationship between different types of residential zoning and racial and ethnic shares of neighborhood populations. We find that a neighborhood zoned for multifamily housing has a non-White population share that is 21 percentage points higher than that of an equally situated single-family neighborhood. By contrast, we find relatively modest differences in racial shares across neighborhoods with differing minimum lot sizes. We argue that these patterns are explained by racial homeownership differences, which are especially severe in the Twin Cities. Policymakers pursuing racial integration should take into account racial differences in tenure and ensure that housing types suited for both owner and rental occupancy are allowed in all neighborhoods.
Unwelcome Neighbors: Evidence of Racial Neighborhood Effects from Transaction-Level Data
Tin Cheuk Leung, Xiaojin (Aaron) Sun & Kwok Ping Tsang
Virginia Tech Working Paper, November 2022
Abstract:
This paper identifies racial neighborhood effects at the transaction level. By matching two large micro-datasets (ZTRAX and HMDA) for the state of Virginia, we pin down the impact of a marginal change of racial composition in a neighborhood by looking at price impacts for transactions that happen immediately after. An additional nonwhite household within a radius of 0.2 miles reduces the price appreciation of a house by 0.08 percentage points. Several additional results suggest that the effects are indeed driven by racial preferences: 1) the effects are weaker in neighborhoods with a thicker housing market, suggesting that the role of racial preferences is limited by market forces; 2) the effects are stronger in richer neighborhoods where homebuyers have a higher willingness or ability to pay for their racial preferences; 3) the effects are also found to be associated with voting behaviors and public anti-racism statements made on social media. We also rule out other potential mechanisms that might explain the effects, including reverse causality and neighborhood expansions.
Jim Crow and Black Economic Progress After Slavery
Lukas Althoff & Hugo Reichardt
Princeton Working Paper, December 2022
Abstract:
This paper studies the long-run effects of slavery and Jim Crow on Black Americans' economic outcomes. We trace each Black family's linked census and administrative records between 1850 and 2000 to measure how long they were enslaved and where they lived during Jim Crow. We show that Black families who were enslaved until the Civil War have considerably lower education, income, and wealth today than Black families who were free before the Civil War. The disparities between the two groups have persisted because most families enslaved until the Civil War lived in states with strict Jim Crow regimes after slavery. In a regression discontinuity design based on ancestors' enslavement location, we show that states' Jim Crow regimes sharply reduced Black families' economic progress in the long run, largely by limiting their access to education. Using quasi-experimental variation, we show that gaining school access closed 80 percent of the gap in human capital caused by exposure to strict Jim Crow regimes.
Racial Difference in Retail Prices Paid
Andrew Butters, Daniel Sacks & Boyoung Seo
Indiana University Working Paper, August 2022
Abstract:
We document racial differences in retail prices paid for physically identical products. Black households pay 2.0 percent higher prices than white households, and Hispanic households pay 0.8 percent higher prices. This difference suggests that conventional measures of racial income differences understate real racial income inequality. The racial price gap is not explained by differences in household income, composition, or education. Instead three factors explain the entirety of the racial price gap: black and Hispanic households buy smaller packages with higher unit prices, benefit less from coupons, and live in high price zip codes. We find suggestive evidence that carrying and transportation costs, not supermarket access, are important underlying factors.
Black and White Names: Evolution and Determinants
Hui Ren Tan
Journal of Economic History, December 2022, Pages 959-1002
Abstract:
Black and white Americans tend to have different names today. This divide was long in the making. I show that the racial divergence in naming patterns was a gradual and continuous process spanning the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I then exploit the migration of households from the South to determine if place matters for name choices. Children born after their households moved receive names that are less black or more white than their older siblings, a difference that widens with time spent outside the South. This may reflect the cultural assimilation of households rather than a response to economic incentives.
The Death Penalty in Black and White: Execution Coverage in Two Southern Newspapers, 1877-1936
Daniel LaChance
Law & Social Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the immediate aftermath of Reconstruction, coverage of executions in the Atlanta Constitution and the New Orleans (Times-)Picayune occasionally portrayed African Americans executed by the state as legally, politically, and spiritually similar to their white counterparts. But as radical white supremacy took hold across the South, the coverage changed. Through an analysis of 667 newspaper articles covering the executions of Black and white men in Georgia and Louisiana from 1877 to 1936, I found that as lynching became the principal form of lethal punishment in the South, accounts of Black men's legal executions shrank in length and journalists increasingly portrayed them as ciphers, nonentities that the state was dispatching with little fanfare. In contrast, accounts of white men's executions continued to showcase their individuality and their membership in social, political, and religious communities. A significant gap between the material reality and the cultural representation of capital punishment emerged. Legal executions in Georgia and Louisiana overwhelmingly targeted Black men. But on the pages of each state's most prominent newspaper, the executions of white men received the most attention. As a result, capital punishment was increasingly represented as a high-status punishment that respected the "whiteness" of those who suffered it.