Routing Race
The Effects of Racial Segregation on Intergenerational Mobility: Evidence from Historical Railroad Placement
Eric Chyn, Kareem Haggag & Bryan Stuart
NBER Working Paper, October 2022
Abstract:
This paper provides new evidence on the causal impacts of city-wide racial segregation on intergenerational mobility. We use an instrumental variable approach that relies on plausibly exogenous variation in segregation due to the arrangement of railroad tracks in the nineteenth century. Our analysis finds that higher segregation reduces upward mobility for Black children from households across the income distribution and White children from low-income households. Moreover, segregation lowers academic achievement while increasing incarceration and teenage birth rates. An analysis of mechanisms shows that segregation reduces government spending, weakens support for anti-poverty policies, and increases racially conservative attitudes for White residents.
Skin Tone and the Health Returns to Higher Status
Reed DeAngelis, Taylor Hargrove & Robert Hummer
Demography, October 2022, Pages 1791–1819
Abstract:
This study addresses two questions. First, why do Black Americans exhibit worse health outcomes than White Americans even at higher levels of socioeconomic status (SES)? Second, are diminished health returns to higher status concentrated among Black Americans with darker skin color? Novel hypotheses are tested with biosocial panel data from Add Health, a nationally representative cohort of Black and White adolescents who have transitioned to adulthood. We find that White and light-skin Black respondents report improved health after achieving higher SES, on average, while their darker-skin Black peers report declining health. These patterns persist regardless of controls for adolescent health status and unmeasured between-person heterogeneity. Moreover, increased inflammation tied to unfair treatment and perceptions of lower status helps to account for patterns of diminished health returns for dark-skin Black groups. Our study is the first to document skin tone heterogeneity in diminished health returns and one of few studies to identify life course stress processes underlying such disparities. We consider additional processes that could be examined in future studies, as well as the broader health and policy implications of our findings.
Racial Disparities in Pulse Oximeter Device Inaccuracy and Estimated Clinical Impact on COVID-19 Treatment Course
Sylvia Sudat et al.
American Journal of Epidemiology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Arterial blood oxygen saturation measured by pulse oximetry (SpO2) may be differentially less accurate for people with darker skin pigmentation, which could potentially affect COVID-19 treatment course. We analyzed pulse oximeter accuracy and association with COVID-19 treatment outcomes using electronic health record (EHR) data from Sutter Health, a large, mixed-payer, integrated healthcare delivery system in northern California, United States (US). We analyzed two cohorts: (1) 43,753 concurrent arterial blood gas (ABG) oxygen saturation (SaO2)/SpO2 measurement pairs taken January 2020-February 2021 for Non-Hispanic white (NHW) or Non-Hispanic Black/African American (NHB) adults, and (2) 8,735 adults who went to the emergency department (ED) with COVID-19 July 2020-February 2021. Pulse oximetry systematically overestimated blood oxygenation by 1% more in NHB individuals than in NHW individuals. For people with COVID-19, this was associated with lower admission probability (-3.1 percentage-points), dexamethasone treatment (-3.1 percentage-points), and supplemental oxygen treatment (-4.5 percentage-points), as well as increased time-to-treatment: +37.2 minutes before dexamethasone initiation and +278.5 minutes before initiation of supplemental oxygen. These results call for additional investigation of pulse oximeters, and suggest that current guidelines for development, testing, and calibration of these devices should be revisited, investigated, and revised.
Barriers to Black Entrepreneurship: Implications for Welfare and Aggregate Output over Time
Pedro Bento & Sunju Hwang
Journal of Monetary Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The number of black-owned businesses in the U.S. has increased dramatically since the 1980s, even compared to the number of non-black-owned businesses and the rise in black labor-market participation. From 1982 to 2012 the fraction black labor-market participants who owned businesses rose from 4 to 16 percent, compared to an increase of 14 to 19 percent for other participants. Combined with other evidence, this suggests black entrepreneurs have faced significant barriers to starting and running businesses and these barriers have declined over time. Interpreted through a model of entrepreneurship, we find declining barriers led to a permanent 14.4 percent increase in (consumption-equivalent) black welfare, a 5.2 percent increase in output per worker (compared to an observed 70 percent increase), and a 9 percent increase in the welfare of other labor-market participants. These impacts are in addition to any gains from declining labor-market barriers.
The Evolution of Access to Public Accommodations in the United States
Lisa Cook et al.
Quarterly Journal of Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The economic analysis of racial discrimination in public accommodations is remarkably limited. To study this issue, we construct a national dataset of nondiscriminatory establishments from the Negro Motorist Green Books, a travel guide published from 1936 to 1966 to aid Black Americans in finding nondiscriminatory retail and service establishments. We document patterns in the geographic spread and evolution of Green Book establishments, as well as the correlates of Green Book presence. We find that economic and social measures, as well as state laws relating to racial discrimination and antidiscrimination, were correlated with the provision of non-discriminatory services. We then use the Green Book data to test whether market conditions and White consumer discrimination led businesses to bar Black customers prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. We use plausibly exogenous variation from White WWII casualties and Black migration patterns to isolate the effect of a change in the racial composition of consumers on the growth of nondiscriminatory businesses. We find that the share of nondiscriminatory establishments grew faster in locations with larger increases in the share of the Black population, but the magnitudes were small. These results highlight the importance of federal legislation in ending racial discrimination in public accommodations.
Ethnicity in housing markets: Buyers, sellers and agents
Natalya Bikmetova, Geoffrey Turnbull & Velma Zahirovic-Herbert
Real Estate Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines how ethnicity related to cultural differences arising from ethnic background affects housing market transactions in the Atlanta metro area. Using both the US Census and Wikipedia approaches to infer ethnicity from individuals' names, we find that the interplay of buyer, seller, and agent ethnicity composition affects interaction in the housing market. Sellers working with listing agents in the same ethnic group set higher listing prices and enjoy higher selling prices and quicker sales. Agents working with same ethnicity buyers yield higher prices and liquidity. Even though sellers only communicate with buyers through their agents, houses sold by sellers to buyers of same ethnicity have higher prices and sell faster. And while the ethnic mix of agents and their clients matter, the ethnic mix of agents in the transaction does not.
Distinguishing Causes of Neighborhood Racial Change: A Nearest Neighbor Design
Patrick Bayer et al.
NBER Working Paper, September 2022
Abstract:
Whether contemporary households consider the race of their neighbors when choosing a neighborhood is controversial. We study neighborhood choice using a novel research design that contrasts the move rate of homeowners who receive a new different-race neighbor nearby to that of homeowners who live further away on the same block. This approach isolates a component of the household move decision directly attributable to their neighbors’ identities. Both Black and white homeowners are more likely to move after receiving a new different-race neighbor in their immediate vicinity. We discuss heterogeneity in this result and implications for understanding modern neighborhood racial change.
Black Trust in US Legislatures
Ernest Dupree & John Hibbing
Legislative Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Trust is a key part of any political system. Given the very different experiences of Black people and White people in the United States, it is likely that the nature and contours of political trust varies widely from one racial group to the other. In this article, we take advantage of a specially commissioned 2018 survey to compare Black and White trust in American legislative institutions (Congress and the state legislatures). Thanks to an oversample, we also are able to zero in on variations across Black respondents, making it possible to identify the variables that push legislative trust up or down within that demographic. Our findings indicate that, relative to Whites, Black individuals are significantly more trusting of Congress and that Black people who go to church tend to be more trusting of legislative institutions while those who have experienced racism in their lives are less trusting.
Beyond Money Whitening: Racialized Hierarchies and Socioeconomic Escalators in Mexico
Wendy Roth, Patricio Solís & Christina Sue American
Sociological Review, October 2022, Pages 827–859
Abstract:
A core sociological claim is that race is a social construction; an important illustration of this is how racial classifications are influenced by people’s socioeconomic status. In both Latin America and the United States, someone with higher SES is more likely to be classified as White than others of similar appearance, a pattern epitomized by the expression “money whitens.” However, recent studies of the effect of SES on racial classifications show inconsistent results, sometimes depending on the measures used. We develop a broad theorization of societies as having multiple racialized hierarchies with different socioeconomic escalators potentially bringing people to higher-status locations in each one. Yet racialized hierarchies differ across societies, and some non-White classifications may reflect a process of upward movement while others may not. We assess this process in Mexico using the 2019 Project on Ethnic-Racial Discrimination in Mexico, a nationally-representative survey including highly accurate digital skin-color ratings, perceived skin-color assessments, and ethnoracial classifications by respondents and interviewers. We find that having higher education increases respondents’ self-classification as Mestizo. Yet those with greater wealth are “whitened” by interviewers. Simultaneously, respondents and interviewers “lighten” respondents with greater wealth. We argue that SES can differentially affect mobility in different racialized hierarchies, showing how race is constructed partly by other social constructs like class.