Volume 35, Number 2 (Spring) 2000
Rivkin, Steven G.. 2000. "School Desegregation, Academic Attainment, and Earnings." Journal of Human Resources 35(2):333-346.
Voluntary and enforced compliance by school districts has reduced the segregation of U.S. public schools. A key question is whether desegregation programs have raised lifetime earnings for blacks, either through the expansion of interracial contact or improvements in school quality. This paper uses information on school demographic composition, district desegregation efforts, school resources, and the academic performance of non-blacks to investigate the impact of school desegregation on academic attainment and earnings. The results provide support for the belief that raising school quality is likely to be much more effective than the reallocation of students among schools as a means to improve academic and labor market outcomes for blacks.
Steven Rivkin is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at Amherst College. I thank the William R. Donner Foundation for financial support, and Walter Nicholson, Geoffrey Woglom, two anonymous referees, and seminar participants at Harvard University, Texas A&M University, UCLA, and the University of Massachusetts for helpful suggestions. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning December 2000 through November 2003 from the Department of Economics, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts 01002.
© 2002 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
US ISSN 0022-166X