IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/10493.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Economic Aftermath of the 1960s Riots: Evidence from Property Values

Author

Listed:
  • William J. Collins
  • Robert A. Margo

Abstract

In the 1960s numerous cities in the United States experienced violent, race-related civil disturbances. Although social scientists have long studied the causes of the riots, the consequences have received much less attention. This paper examines census data from 1950 to 1980 to measure the riots' impact on the value of central-city residential property, and especially on black-owned property. Both ordinary least squares and two-stage least squares estimates indicate that the riots depressed the median value of black-owned property between 1960 and 1970, with little or no rebound in the 1970s. Analysis of household-level data suggests that the racial gap in the value of property widened in riot-afflicted cities during the 1970s.

Suggested Citation

  • William J. Collins & Robert A. Margo, 2004. "The Economic Aftermath of the 1960s Riots: Evidence from Property Values," NBER Working Papers 10493, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10493
    Note: DAE LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w10493.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Collins, William J. & Margo, Robert A., 2000. "Residential segregation and socioeconomic outcomes: When did ghettos go bad?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 239-243, November.
    2. Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson, 2000. "Why Did the West Extend the Franchise? Democracy, Inequality, and Growth in Historical Perspective," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(4), pages 1167-1199.
    3. Eisinger, Peter K., 1973. "The Conditions of Protest Behavior in American Cities," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 67(1), pages 11-28, March.
    4. David M. Cutler & Edward L. Glaeser & Jacob L. Vigdor, 1999. "The Rise and Decline of the American Ghetto," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(3), pages 455-506, June.
    5. Ihlanfeldt, Keith R. & Martinez-Vazquez, Jorge, 1986. "Alternative value estimates of owner-occupied housing: Evidence on sample selection bias and systematic errors," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 356-369, November.
    6. Edward L. Glaeser & Joseph Gyourko, 2005. "Urban Decline and Durable Housing," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(2), pages 345-375, April.
    7. Kain, John F & Quigley, John Michael, 1972. "Housing Market Discrimination, Homeownership, and Savings Behavior," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(3), pages 263-277, June.
    8. DiPasquale, Denise & Glaeser, Edward L., 1998. "The Los Angeles Riot and the Economics of Urban Unrest," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 52-78, January.
    9. David M. Cutler & Edward L. Glaeser, 1997. "Are Ghettos Good or Bad?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(3), pages 827-872.
    10. John F. Kain, 1968. "Housing Segregation, Negro Employment, and Metropolitan Decentralization," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 82(2), pages 175-197.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Doug Miller & Jens Ludwig, 2005. "Does Head Start Improve Children?s Life Chances? Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design," Working Papers 534, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    2. Leah Platt Boustan, 2012. "School Desegregation and Urban Change: Evidence from City Boundaries," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(1), pages 85-108, January.
    3. Zahran, Sammy & Iverson, Terrence & McElmurry, Shawn P. & Weiler, Stephan & Levitt, Ryan, 2019. "Hidden Costs of Blight and Arson in Detroit: Evidence From a Natural Experiment in Devil's Night," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 266-277.
    4. Doug Miller & Jens Ludwig, 2005. "Does Head Start Improve Children?s Life Chances? Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design," Working Papers 54, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    5. Jaideep Gupte & Patricia Justino & Jean-Pierre Tranchant, 2012. "Households amidst urban riots: The economic consequences of civil violence in India," HiCN Working Papers 126, Households in Conflict Network.
    6. Henry Louis Taylor, Jr. & D. Gavin Luter & Camden Miller, 2018. "The University, Neighborhood Revitalization, and Civic Engagement: Toward Civic Engagement 3.0," Societies, MDPI, vol. 8(4), pages 1-21, October.
    7. Collins, William J. & Smith, Fred H., 2007. "A neighborhood-level view of riots, property values, and population loss: Cleveland 1950-1980," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 365-386, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Collins, William J. & Margo, Robert A., 2007. "The Economic Aftermath of the 1960s Riots in American Cities: Evidence from Property Values," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 67(4), pages 849-883, December.
    2. Collins, William J. & Margo, Robert A., 2003. "Race and the value of owner-occupied housing, 1940-1990," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 255-286, May.
    3. William J. Collins & Robert A. Margo, 2003. "The Labor Market Effects of the 1960s Riots," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 0324, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.
    4. Boustan, Leah P. & Margo, Robert A., 2013. "A silver lining to white flight? White suburbanization and African–American homeownership, 1940–1980," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 71-80.
    5. Lévêque, Christophe & Saleh, Mohamed, 2018. "Does industrialization affect segregation? Evidence from nineteenth-century Cairo," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 40-61.
    6. Margo, Robert A., 2016. "Obama, Katrina, and the Persistence of Racial Inequality," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 76(2), pages 301-341, June.
    7. Cutler, David M. & Glaeser, Edward L. & Vigdor, Jacob L., 2008. "When are ghettos bad? Lessons from immigrant segregation in the United States," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 759-774, May.
    8. Logan, Trevon D. & Parman, John M., 2017. "The National Rise in Residential Segregation," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 77(1), pages 127-170, March.
    9. Bayer, Patrick & Fang, Hanming & McMillan, Robert, 2014. "Separate when equal? Racial inequality and residential segregation," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 32-48.
    10. Collins, William J., 2004. "The housing market impact of state-level anti-discrimination laws, 1960-1970," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(3), pages 534-564, May.
    11. Vigdor, Jacob L., 2003. "Residential segregation and preference misalignment," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(3), pages 587-609, November.
    12. William J. Collins, 2003. "The Housing Market Impact of State-Level Anti-Discrimination Laws, 1960-970," NBER Working Papers 9562, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Sofia Wixe & Lars Pettersson, 2020. "Segregation and individual employment: a longitudinal study of neighborhood effects," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 64(1), pages 9-36, February.
    14. Alberto Alesina & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, 2011. "Segregation and the Quality of Government in a Cross Section of Countries," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(5), pages 1872-1911, August.
    15. Olof Åslund & John Östh & Yves Zenou, 2010. "How important is access to jobs? Old question--improved answer," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 10(3), pages 389-422, May.
    16. Tito Boeri & Marta De Philippis & Eleonora Patacchini & Michele Pellizzari, 2015. "Immigration, Housing Discrimination and Employment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 125(586), pages 82-114, August.
    17. Picard, Pierre M. & Zenou, Yves, 2015. "Urban Spatial Structure, Employment and Social Ties: European versus American Cities," IZA Discussion Papers 9166, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Harris Selod & Yves Zenou, 2006. "City Structure, Job Search and Labour Discrimination: Theory and Policy Implications," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 116(514), pages 1057-1087, October.
    19. David M. Brasington & Diane Hite & Andres Jauregui, 2015. "House Price Impacts Of Racial, Income, Education, And Age Neighborhood Segregation," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(3), pages 442-467, June.
    20. Kulkarni, Nirupama & Malmendier, Ulrike, 2022. "Homeownership segregation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 123-149.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • R0 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General
    • N92 - Economic History - - Regional and Urban History - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10493. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.