An Empirical Analysis of Racial Segregation in Higher Education

Peter Hinrichs

No 21831, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This descriptive paper documents how segregation between blacks and whites across colleges in the United States has evolved since the 1960s. It also explores potential channels through which changes are occurring, and it uses recent data to study the issue of segregation within colleges. The main findings are as follows: (1) White exposure to blacks has been rising since the 1960s, whereas black exposure to whites increased sharply in the late 1960s and early 1970s and has fluctuated since then. Meanwhile, black-white dissimilarity and the Theil index fell sharply in the late 1960s and early 1970s and have fallen more gradually since. (2) There has been regional convergence, although colleges in the South remain more segregated than those in any other region when measured by dissimilarity, by the Theil index, or by black exposure to whites. (3) A major channel for the decline in segregation is the declining share of blacks attending historically black colleges and universities. (4) Although there is segregation within universities, most segregation across major × university cells occurs across universities.

JEL-codes: I24 I28 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu
Note: ED LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published as Peter Hinrichs, 2024. "An Empirical Analysis of Racial Segregation in Higher Education," Education Finance and Policy, vol 19(2), pages 218-251.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w21831.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: An Empirical Analysis of Racial Segregation in Higher Education (2024)
Working Paper: An Empirical Analysis of Racial Segregation in Higher Education (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:21831

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w21831

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().