The long-run effects of the 1930s HOLC “redlining” maps on place-based measures of economic opportunity and socioeconomic success

Daniel Aaronson, Jacob Faber, Daniel Hartley, Bhashkar Mazumder and Patrick Sharkey

Regional Science and Urban Economics, 2021, vol. 86, issue C

Abstract: We estimate the long-run effects of the 1930s Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) redlining maps on census tract-level measures of socioeconomic status and economic opportunity from the Opportunity Atlas (Chetty et al., 2018). We use two identification strategies to identify the long-run effects of differential access to credit along HOLC boundaries. The first compares cross-boundary differences along actual HOLC boundaries to a comparison group of boundaries that had similar pre-existing differences as the actual boundaries. A second approach uses a statistical model to identify boundaries that were least likely to have been chosen by the HOLC. We find that the maps had large and statistically significant causal effects on a wide variety of outcomes measured at the census tract level for cohorts born in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Keywords: Intergenerational mobility; Redlining; Economic opportunity; Segregation; Access to credit; HOLC (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Working Paper: The Long-Run Effects of the 1930s HOLC “Redlining” Maps on Place-Based Measures of Economic Opportunity and Socioeconomic Success (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:regeco:v:86:y:2021:i:c:s0166046220303070

DOI: 10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2020.103622

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