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Was Postwar Suburbanization "White Flight"? Evidence from the Black Migration

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Author Info
Leah Platt Boustan

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Abstract

Residential segregation across jurisdiction lines generates disparities in public services and education by race. The distinctive American pattern -- in which blacks live in the center city and whites in the suburban ring -- was enhanced by black migration from the rural South from 1940-1970. I show that urban whites responded to this black influx by relocating to the suburbs and rule out the indirect effect on urban housing prices as a cause. Black migrants may have been attracted to areas already undergoing suburbanization. I create an instrument for changes in urban diversity that predicts black migrant flows from southern states and assigns these flows to northern cities according to established settlement patterns. The best causal estimates imply that "white flight" explains around 20 percent of suburban growth in the postwar period.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 13543.

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Date of creation: Oct 2007
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13543

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
N12 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Growth and Fluctuations - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-
R23 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population

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  16. Leah Platt Boustan, 2007. "Escape from the City? The Role of Race, Income, and Local Public Goods in Post-War Suburbanization," NBER Working Papers 13311, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Leah Platt Boustan & Price V. Fishback & Shawn E. Kantor, 2007. "The Effect of Internal Migration on Local Labor Markets: American Cities During the Great Depression," NBER Working Papers 13276, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. David Card & Alexandre Mas & Jesse Rothstein, 2007. "Tipping and the Dynamics of Segregation," NBER Working Papers 13052, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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