Segregation and Inequality in Public Goods

Jessica Trounstine

American Journal of Political Science, 2016, vol. 60, issue 3, 709-725

Abstract: Many U.S. cities function without regular problems. They have well‐kept roads, sewers that never overflow, and public parks with swing sets and restrooms. Others struggle to maintain balanced budgets, fail to adequately equip or staff their police forces, and offer little assistance to residents of limited means. What explains these differences? I argue that segregation along racial lines contributes to public goods inequalities. Racially segregated cities are also politically polarized cities, making collective investment more challenging and public goods expenditures lower. I provide evidence for this argument using election data from 25 large cities and demographic data matched to city finances in more than 2,600 places. To handle the problem of endogeneity, I instrument for segregation using the number of waterways in a city. I find that segregated municipalities are more politically polarized and spend less on a wide range of public goods.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12227

Related works:
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:wly:amposc:v:60:y:2016:i:3:p:709-725

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in American Journal of Political Science from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().