Opponents of school vouchers often argue that school vouchers will lead to .white flight. from public schools that are disproportionately non-white, creating more racially segregated schools. In this paper, we present new evidence on whether universal vouchers will lead to a systematic departure of whites from predominantly minority schools increasing racial segregation in those schools. Specifically, we use data on vote outcomes from a state-wide universal voucher initiative to estimate the likelihood that white households with children currently in public schools will use vouchers to switch out of more-integrated schools. Our results indicate that white households with children attending schools with large concentrations of non-white schoolchildren are significantly more likely to support school vouchers, an effect that is absent for non-white households with children and households without children. Finally, follow-up analyses suggest that this result is driven less by race, per se, but more by other student characteristics that are correlated with race.
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Paper provided by University of Connecticut, Department of Economics in its series Working papers with number
2006-01.
Length: 45 pages Date of creation: Jan 2006 Date of revision:
Aug 2008 Handle: RePEc:uct:uconnp:2006-01
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Find related papers by JEL classification: H3 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education R2 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics - - Household Analysis
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