The racial gap in education and the legacy of slavery

Graziella Bertocchi () and Arcangelo Dimico

Journal of Comparative Economics, 2012, vol. 40, issue 4, 581-595

Abstract: We study the evolution of racial educational inequality across US states from 1940 to 2000. We show that throughout this period, despite evidence of convergence, the racial gap in attainment between blacks and whites has been persistently determined by the initial gap. We obtain these results with 2SLS estimates where slavery is used as an instrument for the initial gap. We address the question of the excludability of slavery by instrumenting it with the share of disembarked slaves from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Using the same approach we also find that income growth is negatively affected by the initial racial gap in education and that slavery affects growth indirectly through this channel.

Keywords: Race; Inequality; Education; Slavery; Development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I24 J15 N31 O11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (38)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jcecon:v:40:y:2012:i:4:p:581-595

DOI: 10.1016/j.jce.2012.04.001

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