The Great Migration and Education: How African American Migrant Flows Impacted Northern Cities' Finance Decisions (thesis)

Abstract

Ethnic fragmentation influences local preferences and the provision of public goods, such as education. I examine the effect of changes in racial composition for Northern and Western cities between 1940 and 1970 on city education expenditure. I estimate the effect of black in-migration using a shift-share instrument, which interacts predicted black Southern migration flows with pre-1940 black migrant settlement patterns. I find that a 10,000-person increase in black population reduces education expenditure per capita by 2.4% and reduces the percent of general expenditure allocated to education by almost 0.2 percentage points. These results support the public goods and ethnic divisions theory and may help explain reduced upward mobility for African Americans in Great Migration destination cities.