The Effects of School Desegregation on Crime David A. Weiner, NYC Dep’t of Ed. Byron F. Lutz, Federal Reserve Board Jens Ludwig, Georgetown & NBER

Topic: Effects of School Desegregation on Crime First credible (we think) estimates of court-ordered school desegregation impacts on crime – specifically homicides Use variation in timing of court desegregation orders among districts subject to orders 60s-80s Desegregation orders generate large declines in homicide rates to blacks and whites at time of desegregation and persistent, long-run declines in homicide offending for blacks Due in part to increase in racial integration for blacks & increases in education spending for whites

Why Might Segregation Matter for Crime? Peer effects –Standard Theory –Specific to Desegregation: alter perceptions of opportunities for minorities in American society & increase self esteem School quality –Sort black students into higher quality schools and increase overall school spending –Direct Effect: produce students with lower crime propensity –Indirect Effect: increased educational attainment alters opportunity cost of crime Ambiguous Effect on Crime : might also intensify racial tension

Historical Background Brown v. Board of Education issued in 1954 Little desegregation occurred in the 1950s and early 1960s Larger southern districts began desegregating after 1968 Green decision Non-Southern districts began desegregating in large number after 1973 Keyes decision

Relevant Literature Lafree and Arum (2006), Criminology –Incarceration rates higher for blacks born in states with more racially segregated schools –Effect is identified from those who migrate from their state of birth Link

Data Vital Statistics (VS) data on mortality –Census of homicide victims from 1959 to 1988 by age and race –But only data on victims Supplemental Homicide Report (SHR) data on homicide offending –Data from 1976 to 2002 –Directly measures behavior, but measures arrests Numerous other data sources as well (census, school-level data collected by Welch and Light, etc.) Unit of Observation = County-year Link

Research design 125 large districts identified in Welch and Light (1987) –1% of all districts but 20% all students, 45% of minority students Most desegregation orders between 1968 and 1978 (some earlier, later) Identification comes from plausibly random timing of these court orders among set of districts ever subject to such orders Compare changes in crime across districts around time of desegregation orders link

Research design

Distribution of 1975 Black Age Homicide Rates per 100,000

Research Design OLS with Level of the Homicide Rate as Dep Var. Proportional Response Model: Count Model –Quasi-maximum likelihood (QML) count model –Good consistency properties relative to other count models (Wooldridge 1999) –Estimates a proportional response: interpret coefficients as estimating the percent change in the dependent variable –Standard errors clustered using the robust variance estimator proposed by Wooldridge (1999)

Link Link: Falsification Exercise

Mechanisms School Racial Integration – Reber (2004) Local Publics Goods Link

Changes in Local Public Goods Census Bureau’s Census of Governments Finances Panel: 1972, 1977, 1982, 1987 All expenditures on given type of public good within the county (i.e. includes county governments, school districts, etc.)

Connection Between Mechanism and Homicides Calculate change in the mechanism from one year prior to desegregation to four years after - 5 year changes Interact these changes with the post vector Cannot be interpreted in a causal manner: suggestive evidence

Implications, part 1 Can school desegregation orders starting in late 1960s explain part of the decline in the black homicide rate?

Homicide rates for people aged 15-24

Implications, part 2 Previous results might misstate distributional and social welfare implications of desegregation –Our results: 2 fewer homicides per 100,000 whites –Around 10 per 100,000 fewer homicides to blacks –Cohen et al. (2004), WTP per homicide $9.7m –So benefits of around $200 per white youth in county and $1,000 per black youth in county By comparison, avg. per pupil spending in US over our study period probably around $4,500

Contributions Non-Academic outcomes –Could significantly alter conclusions about welfare arising from literature on academic outcomes: Perry Preschool, crime impacts 2/3 of benefits –Also could change assessment of distributional consequences of policy Econometric Identification Long-run Effects of Desegregation Mechanisms back

Data Unit of Observation = County-year –Note school districts were subject to court orders –But Vital Statistics data at county level –For around 1/3 of cases, district=county –District enrollments account for around ½ of school-age population in our counties We examine homicide rates and therefore require annual population counts by county –In non-census years, these are imputations, with adjustments, produced by the Census Bureau –If these fail to capture “white flight” then our estimates will be biased downward – we will understate the homicide rate because of mismeasurement in the denominator back

Segregation Measures Dissimilarity Index – assess sorting of students b it and w it refer to the number of black and white students, respectively, at school i at time t B t and W t refer to the total number of black and white students, respectively, in the school district ranges from 0 to 1, with 1 denoting complete segregation Interpretable as the percent of black students who would need to be reassigned to a different school for perfect integration to be achieved given the districts overall racial composition Racial Composition changes measured by enrollment by race at district level (`reverse white flight’)

Segregation Measures Exposure Index t i is the total enrollment at school i Interpretable as the percent of white students in the average black student’s school For a given district, it ranges from 0 to the percent of white students in the district as a whole It can be viewed as a measure of the extent of contact between the two races Changes reflect the net effect of changes in both sorting between schools and changes in the district racial composition

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Motivation 1954 Brown decision launches one of most important social policy changes in 20 th century America Most of the existing literature focuses on academic outcomes; limited research on the impact of court-ordered desegregation on economically important outcomes other than education –Very large social costs of crime (~$2 trillion / year) Important because of recent wave of dismissals of court-ordered desegregation plans

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Falsification Check Mortality from Illness Should not be affected by the mechanisms (peer effects, school quality, police spending, etc.) by which desegregation influences homicides General check on identification strategy and specifically on issue of possible measurement error in the denominator for whites Age 15 – 19 mortality from illness is 13.0 per 100,000, compared to 10.7 for homicides

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