The White/Black Educational Gap, Stalled Progress, and the Long-Term Consequences of the Emergence of Crack Cocaine Markets

William Evans, Craig Garthwaite and Timothy Moore
Additional contact information
Craig Garthwaite: Northwestern University and NBER

The Review of Economics and Statistics, 2016, vol. 98, issue 5, 832-847

Abstract: We propose the rise of crack cocaine markets as a key explanation for the end to the convergence in black-white educational outcomes in the United States that began in the mid-1980s. After constructing a measure to date the arrival of crack markets in cities and states, we show that the decline in educational outcomes for black males begins with the start of the crack epidemic. We also show that there are higher murder and incarceration rates after the arrival of crack cocaine and that these are predictive of lower black high school completion rates, a result consistent with human capital theory. We estimate that effects related to crack markets can account for approximately 40% to 70% of the fall in black male high school completion rates.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/REST_a_00635 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: The White/Black Educational Gap, Stalled Progress, and the Long Term Consequences of the Emergence of Crack Cocaine Markets (2012)
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:tpr:restat:v:98:y:2016:i:5:p:832-847

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://mitpressjour ... rnal/?issn=0034-6535

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of Economics and Statistics is currently edited by Pierre Azoulay, Olivier Coibion, Will Dobbie, Raymond Fisman, Benjamin R. Handel, Brian A. Jacob, Kareen Rozen, Xiaoxia Shi, Tavneet Suri and Yi Xu

More articles in The Review of Economics and Statistics from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press ().