Racial Sorting and the Emergence of Segregation in American Cities

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Shertzer, Allison; Walsh, Randall P.
• 署名单位: Pennsylvania Commonwealth System of Higher Education (PCSHE); University of Pittsburgh; National Bureau of Economic Research
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF ECONOMICS AND STATISTICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0034-6535
• DOI: 10.1162/rest_a_00786
• 发表日期: 2019-07
• 页码: 415-427
• 关键词: internal migration; immigration; rise

摘要

Residential segregation by race grew sharply during the early twentieth century as black migrants from the South arrived in northern cities. Using newly assembled neighborhood-level data, we provide the first systematic evidence on the impact of prewar population dynamics within cities on the emergence of the American ghetto. Leveraging exogenous changes in neighborhood racial composition, we show that white flight in response to black arrivals was quantitatively large and accelerated between 1900 and 1930. A key implication of our findings is that segregation could have arisen solely from the flight behavior of whites.