Was Postwar Suburbanization "White Flight"? Evidence from the Black Migration / Leah Platt Boustan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Boustan, Leah Platt.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w13543.

NBER working paper series no. w13543

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2007.

Summary:

Residential segregation by jurisdiction generates disparities in public services and education. The distinctive American pattern - in which blacks live in cities and whites in suburbs - was enhanced by a large black migration from the rural South. I show that whites responded to this black influx by leaving cities and rule out an indirect effect on housing prices as a sole cause. I instrument for changes in black population by using local economic conditions to predict black migration from southern states and assigning predicted flows to northern cities according to established settlement patterns. The best causal estimates imply that each black arrival led to 2.7 white departures.

Notes:

Print version record

October 2007.