The Evolution of the Racial Gap in Education and the Legacy of Slavery

Graziella Bertocchi () and Arcangelo Dimico

No 6192, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

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. The excludability of slavery is preliminarily established 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: development; slavery; education; inequality; race (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I24 J15 N31 O11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2011-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem
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Published - revised version published as 'The Racial Gap in Education and the Legacy of Slavery' in: Journal of Comparative Economics, 2012, 40, 581-595

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Related works:
Working Paper: The Evolution of the Racial Gap in Education and the Legacy of Slavery (2011)
Working Paper: The Evolution of the Racial Gap in Education and the Legacy of Slavery (2011)
Working Paper: The Evolution of the Racial Gap in Education and the Legacy of Slavery (2011)
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