Roots
The Degree of Disadvantage: Incarceration and Inequality in Education
Stephanie Ewert, Bryan Sykes & Becky Pettit
ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, January 2014, Pages 24-43
Abstract:
This article examines how the rise in incarceration and its disproportionate concentration among low-skill, young African American men influences estimates of educational attainment in the United States. We focus on high school graduation rates and the persistent gap in attainment that exists between young black and white Americans. Although official statistics show a declining racial gap in high school dropout in recent years, conventional data sources exclude the incarcerated population from sample data. We show how those exclusions underestimate the extent of racial inequality in high school graduation and underestimate the dropout rate among young black men by as much as 40 percent. America’s prisons and jails have become repositories for high school dropouts, thereby obscuring the degree of disadvantage faced by black men in the contemporary United States and the relative competitiveness of the U.S. workforce.
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The Internet and Hate Crime: Offline Spillovers from Online Access
Jason Chan, Anindya Ghose & Robert Seamans
New York University Working Paper, September 2013
Abstract:
The Internet has had profound effects on society, both positive and negative. In this paper we examine the effect of the Internet on a negative spillover: hate crime. In order to better understand the link, we study the extent to which broadband availability affects racial hate crimes in the US from 1999-2008. To address measurement error, we instrument for broadband availability using slope of terrain. We find strong evidence that broadband availability increases racial hate crimes. The results are stronger in areas with greater racial segregation and with more online searches for racist words, suggesting that the direct effect of the Internet on hate crime is primarily due to a heightening of pre-existing propensities to engage in hate activity. We find no evidence that the Internet has affected crime reporting. The results are robust to alternative specifications and falsification tests. These results shed light on one of the many offline spillovers from increased online access, and suggest that governmental and private regulation of online content may help reduce hate crime.
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Has Social Security Redistributed to Whites from People of Color?
Caleb Quakenbush, Karen Smith & Eugene Steuerle
Urban Institute Working Paper, November 2013
Abstract:
This brief considers how Social Security’s many benefit and tax features have redistributed across groups over time. Using Current Population Survey data from 1970 through 1994 and microsimulation projections from the Urban Institute’s DYNASIM3 model, we find that for many decades, Social Security redistributed from blacks, Hispanics, and other people of color, to whites. These transfers will likely to continue in future decades. Our findings suggest that future reforms that place the burden of Social Security reform solely on younger, more diverse generations may have undesired distributional consequences if the aim of the program is to provide greater relative protections to more vulnerable groups.
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The Heterogeneity of Southern White Distinctiveness
Steven White
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article documents and assesses subregional variation among white southerners in presidential voting behavior and a variety of issue attitudes. I demonstrate that whites in the South remain consistently distinct from those in the rest of the nation, but heterogeneously so: whites in the Deep South are generally far more conservative than their Peripheral South neighbors. I also assess how the region’s disproportionate concentration of born-again Christians can confound assessments of regional and state coefficients when properly accounted for in regression models. By demonstrating the continuing distinctiveness of the white South, the significant variation present within the region, and the interrelationship of region and religion, these results have theoretical and methodological implications for the study of American politics.
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Amidst Poverty and Prejudice: Black and Irish Civil War Veterans
Hoyt Bleakley, Louis Cain & Joseph Ferrie
NBER Working Paper, October 2013
Abstract:
This study examines a wide range of health and economic outcomes in a sample of Irish- and African-American Civil War veterans during the postbellum period. The information in our data is from a variety of circumstances across an individual’s life span, and we use that to attempt to explain whether the disparities in mortality are related to disparities in life experiences. We find evidence of disparities between Irish and blacks and others in such variables as occupation and wealth, morbidity, and mortality. The data do not reveal disparate outcomes for all blacks and Irish; they only reveal inferior outcomes for slave-born blacks and foreign-born Irish. For the freeborn blacks and native-born Irish, for whom the historical tradition suggests discrimination and prejudice, the data only hint at such problems.
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Simon Topping
Journal of American Studies, November 2013, Pages 1131-1154
Abstract:
This article will examine the ways in which the people of Northern Ireland and African American troops stationed there during the Second World War reacted to each other. It will also consider the effect of institutional racism in the American military on this relationship, concluding that, for the most part, the population welcomed black soldiers and refused to endorse American racial attitudes or enforce Jim Crow segregation. This piece argues that, bearing in mind the latent racism of the time, the response of the Northern Irish to African Americans was essentially colour-blind, and this was true in both the Protestant and Catholic communities.
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The human capital of black soldiers during the American civil war
Kitae Sohn
Economics Letters, January 2014, Pages 40–43
Abstract:
Analyzing three datasets on black and white soldiers and the black and white populations from the same birth years, this paper finds that black soldiers had much higher human capital than the black population as a whole.
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Betting on Secession: Quantifying Political Events Surrounding Slavery and the Civil War
Charles Calomiris & Jonathan Pritchett
NBER Working Paper, November 2013
Abstract:
Abraham Lincoln’s election produced Southern secession, Civil War, and abolition. Using a new database of slave sales from New Orleans, we examine the connections between political news and the prices of slaves for 1856-1861. We find that slave prices declined by roughly a third from their 1860 peak, reflecting increased southern pessimism regarding the possibility of war and the war’s possible outcome. The South’s decision to secede reflected the beliefs that the North would not invade to oppose secession, and that emancipation of slaves without compensation was unlikely, both of which were subsequently dashed by Lincoln’s actions.
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First to the Party: The Group Origins of the Partisan Transformation on Civil Rights, 1940–1960
Christopher Baylor
Studies in American Political Development, October 2013, Pages 111-141
Abstract:
One of the most momentous shifts in twentieth-century party politics was the Democratic Party's embrace of civil rights. Recent scholarship finds that this realignment began as early as the 1940s and traces it to pressure groups, especially organized labor. But such scholarship does not explain why labor, which was traditionally hostile to African Americans, began to work with them. Nor does it ascribe agency to the efforts of African American pressure groups. Focusing on the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), this article attempts to fill these gaps in the literature. It explains why civil rights and labor leaders reassessed their traditional animosities and began to work as allies in the Democratic Party. It further shows how pressure from the new black-blue alliance forced the national Democratic Party to stop straddling civil rights issues and to become instead the vehicle for promoting civil rights. NAACP and CIO leaders consciously sought to remake the Democratic Party by marginalizing conservative Southerners, and eventually succeeded.
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Parental Incarceration, Child Homelessness, and the Invisible Consequences of Mass Imprisonment
Christopher Wildeman
ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, January 2014, Pages 74-96
Abstract:
This article presents research on the consequences of mass imprisonment for childhood inequality. I investigate average and race-specific effects of paternal and maternal incarceration on the risk of child homelessness, using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. The results suggest that (1) recent paternal but not maternal incarceration substantially increases the risk of child homelessness, (2) effects are concentrated among African American children, and (3) increases in familial economic hardship and decreases in access to institutional support explain some of the relationship. Taken together, the findings indicate the prison boom was likely a key driver of the growing racial disparities in child homelessness, increasing black-white inequality in this risk by 65 percent since the 1970s. When coupled with the other effects of mass imprisonment on childhood inequality, these results suggest that the prison boom will likely lead to far greater black-white inequality in civic and political participation, as the children of the prison boom come of age.
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A silver lining to white flight? White suburbanization and African–American homeownership, 1940–1980
Leah Boustan & Robert Margo
Journal of Urban Economics, November 2013, Pages 71–80
Abstract:
Between 1940 and 1980, the homeownership rate among metropolitan African–American households increased by 27 percentage points. Nearly three-quarters of this increase occurred in central cities. We show that rising black homeownership in central cities was facilitated by the movement of white households to the suburban ring, which reduced the price of urban housing units conducive to owner-occupancy. Our OLS and IV estimates imply that 26 percent of the national increase in black homeownership over the period is explained by white suburbanization.
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Black and white homebuyer, homeowner, and household segregation in the United States, 1990–2010
Mary Fischer
Social Science Research, November 2013, Pages 1726–1736
Abstract:
As homeownership has been expanding in the United States over the past several decades, residential segregation between blacks and whites has been declining in most metropolitan areas. However, the degree to which the residential patterns of new homebuyers have mirrored these overall trends in segregation and how the massive increase in home buying has related to changes in segregation has remained largely unexplored. This paper examines the segregation of new black homebuyers from white households, new white homebuyers from black households, and black and white households from each other using Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data from 1992 to 2010 merged with data from the Census and ACS. I find that black homebuyers are less segregated from white households than black homeowners overall and black households in general, providing evidence in support of the spatial assimilation model that would predict better outcomes for homeowners. Also consistent with the spatial assimilation perspective, I found in the multivariate models that increased income parity between blacks and whites and growth in black lending are associated with average declines in black/white household segregation from 1990 to 2010. Although subprime lending was not associated with overall changes in segregation, metropolitan areas with higher percentages of loans to blacks from subprime lenders experienced increases in segregation of both black homeowners from white households as well as white owners from black households.
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Submersed in Social Segregation: The (Re)Production of Social Capital Through Swim Club Membership
Jaime DeLuca
Journal of Sport and Social Issues, November 2013, Pages 340-363
Abstract:
This article examines the ways in which upper middle class families acquire, transmit, and preserve their social and cultural capitals through membership at the Pine View Swim and Tennis Club, a semiprivate facility located near a major mid-Atlantic city in the United States. Drawing on Cultural theorist Pierre Bourdieu’s theorizing on sport participation and social class position, as well as 4 years of ethnographic investigation, I argue that the pool, as a cultural field, maintains socially segregated boundaries offering members a significant, yet hidden vehicle through which they can facilitate their class and race-based privilege. Specifically, Pine View fosters an important sense of community and belonging in and through members, as well as an exclusive social learning opportunity, thus contributing to the (re)production of their White, privileged habitus.
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Nancy Krieger et al.
American Journal of Public Health, December 2013, Pages 2234-2244
Objectives: We explored associations between the abolition of Jim Crow laws (i.e., state laws legalizing racial discrimination overturned by the 1964 US Civil Rights Act) and birth cohort trends in infant death rates.
Methods: We analyzed 1959 to 2006 US Black and White infant death rates within and across sets of states (polities) with and without Jim Crow laws.
Results: Between 1965 and 1969, a unique convergence of Black infant death rates occurred across polities; in 1960 to 1964, the Black infant death rate was 1.19 times higher (95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.18, 1.20) in the Jim Crow polity than in the non–Jim Crow polity, whereas in 1970 to 1974 the rate ratio shrank to and remained at approximately 1 (with the 95% CI including 1) until 2000, when it rose to 1.10 (95% CI = 1.08, 1.12). No such convergence occurred for Black–White differences in infant death rates or for White infants.
Conclusions: Our results suggest that abolition of Jim Crow laws affected US Black infant death rates and that valid analysis of societal determinants of health requires appropriate comparison groups.
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Are We There Yet? The Voting Rights Act and Black Representation on City Councils, 1981–2006
Paru Shah, Melissa Marschall & Anirudh Ruhil
Journal of Politics, October 2013, Pages 993-1008
Abstract:
Sound evidence demonstrating what, if any, role the Voting Rights Act (VRA) has played in the impressive gains minorities have made in local office holding over the last 45 years remains in short supply. The present study is motivated by three crucial questions. First, where are gains in minority office holding most apparent, and how are these gains related to the VRA? Second, while studies have noted gains in black representation over time, the question of how the VRA in particular has contributed to these gains remains unclear. Finally, given claims made by opponents of the 2006 legislation reauthorizing the VRA that it was no longer needed, the question of when the VRA has been most efficacious, and if it continues to be relevant, is also salient. Our findings suggest that the VRA has been and continues to be an important tool in ensuring black descriptive representation, particularly in places with a legacy of racial intimidation and discrimination.
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Marcus Britton, Pat Rubio Goldsmith & Marcus Britton
Urban Studies, November 2013, Pages 2886-2903
Abstract:
Prior research has shown that neighbourhood racial and income contexts remain similar across generations within White, Black and Latino families in the US. This article builds on this research by examining the extent to which geographical mobility during the transition to adulthood attenuates the perpetuation of residential segregation from Whites among Asians, Blacks and Latinos. Data from the National Education Longitudinal Study linked to 1990 and 2000 US census data were analysed. Results suggest that residential exposure to Whites is similar during youth and adulthood among young adults who live in the same metropolitan area where they lived as adolescents, regardless of race/ethnicity. Among those who migrate to another metropolitan area, adolescent exposure predicts exposure among Asian, Black and Latino young adults, but not among Whites themselves. Thus, limited experience with integrated neighbourhoods during adolescence among non-Whites and limited geographical mobility among all young adults help to perpetuate segregation.
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Race and neighborhoods in the 21st century: What does segregation mean today?
Jorge De la Roca, Ingrid Gould Ellen & Katherine O’Regan
Regional Science and Urban Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Noting the decline in segregation between blacks and whites over the past several decades, some recent work argues that racial segregation is no longer a concern in the 21st century. In response, this paper revisits some of the concerns that John Quigley raised about racial segregation and neighborhoods to assess their relevance today. We note that while segregation levels between blacks and whites have certainly declined, they remain quite high; Hispanic and Asian segregation have meanwhile remained unchanged. Further, our analysis shows that the neighborhood environments of minorities continue to be highly unequal to those enjoyed by whites. Blacks and Hispanics continue to live among more disadvantaged neighbors, to have access to lower performing schools, and to be exposed to more violent crime. Further, these differences are amplified in more segregated metropolitan areas.
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Are Minority Areas Disproportionately Targeted for Halfway House Placement?
S.E. Costanza, John Kilburn & Susan Vendetti-Koski
Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice, Fall 2013, Pages 256-276
Abstract:
The geographic placement of halfway houses is an important issue in the field of community corrections. Much research has underscored the social justice issues involved with the subsidization and placement of halfway houses within certain communities. A commonly held belief is that state and local governments actively target lower socioeconomic status, minority communities for the placement of houses, as residents have little power to resist. This article uses data collected on Connecticut towns from 2000 to 2008 and reveals that state-subsidized halfway houses are significantly more likely to be sited in non-White communities with high index crime rates.