Municipal Housekeeping: The Impact of Women’s Suffrage on Public Education

Celeste K. Carruthers and Marianne H. Wanamaker

Journal of Human Resources, 2015, vol. 50, issue 4, 837-872

Abstract: Gains in 20th century real wages and reductions in the black-white wage gap have been linked to the midcentury ascent of school quality. With a new data set uniquely appropriate to identifying the impact of female voter enfranchisement on education spending, we attribute up to one-third of the 1920–40 rise in public school expenditures to the Nineteenth Amendment. Yet the continued disenfranchisement of black Southerners meant white school gains far outpaced those for blacks. As a result, women’s suffrage exacerbated racial inequality in education expenditures and substantially delayed relative gains in black human capital observed later in the century.

Date: 2015
Note: DOI: 10.3368/jhr.50.4.837
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uwp:jhriss:v:50:y:2015:i:4:p:837-872

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