What Determines School Segregation? The Crucial Role of Neighborhood Factors

Gregorio Caetano and Hugh Macartney

No 27688, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We develop a novel strategy to identify the relative importance of school and neighborhood factors in determining school segregation. Using detailed student enrollment and residential location data, our research design compares differences in student composition between adjacent Census blocks served by different schools to analogous differences between those schools. Our findings indicate that neighborhood factors explain around 62% of racial segregation and 44% of economic segregation across all schools, playing an even more pronounced role in urban areas, where school segregation has been especially acute. These findings suggest that the involvement of urban planners is essential when attempting to confront inequality of opportunity through education.

JEL-codes: I21 J15 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
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Published as Caetano, Gregorio & Macartney, Hugh, 2021. "What determines school segregation? The crucial role of neighborhood factors," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 194(C).

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Journal Article: What determines school segregation? The crucial role of neighborhood factors (2021)
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