Racial Segregation and Public School Expenditure
Year: 2009
Type: preprint
Abstract: This paper explores the eect of racial segregation on public school expenditure in US metropolitan areas and school districts. Our start- ing point is the literature that relates public good provision to the degree of racial fragmentation in the community. We argue that look- ing at fragmentation alone may be misleading and that the geographic distribution of dierent racial groups needs to be taken into account. Greater segregation is associated with more homogeneity in some sub- areas and more heterogeneity in others, and this matters if decisions on spending are taken at aggregation levels lower than the MSA. For given fragmentation, the extent of segregation conveys information on households'possibility to sort into relatively more or less homogeneous jurisdictions. We account for the potential endogeneity of racial segre- gation and …nd that the latter has a positive impact on average public school expenditure both at the MSA and at the district level. At the same time, increased segregation leads to more inequality in spending across districts of the same MSA, thus worsening the relative position of poorer districts.
Source: SSRN Electronic Journal
Author: Angelo Mele
Institution: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1533049741