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Racial segregation in the public schools and adult labor market outcomes: the case of black Americans

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Abstract

Residential segregation has played a central role in theories of minority entrepreneurship and in the diversification of the U.S. labor market. Racial diversity in public accommodations, including schools, has been an issue of continuous public policy debate at least since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Plessy versus Ferguson decision (1896). This study applies theory from the literature on social capital to an examination of the role of racial segregation in the public schools of blacks during childhood on their adult likelihood to become self-employed and their level of occupational status. The model results indicate that, after controlling for a number of individual, household and metropolitan-area factors, lower rates of segregation during public schooling results in higher likelihood of wage-salary employment and self-employment among a cohort of black Americans that attended public schools during the 1960s.

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Notes

  1. This period was utilized in this analysis because data prior to that date were unavailable and because there was a desire to include a period that allowed the data to reflect a broad range of adult career choices.

  2. Hypothetically, an index of exposure rating of 1.00 would mean that the average black student in a Metropolitan Statistical Area attended schools that were 100% white; thus, not including any blacks.

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to acknowledge the helpful comments of Timothy Bates and Robert Fairlie, and Rachna Maheshwari for statistical assistance on this manuscript.

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  1. Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Virginia, FOB 185, P. O. Box 6550, Charlottesville, VA, 22906, USA

    Gregory Fairchild

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Fairchild, G. Racial segregation in the public schools and adult labor market outcomes: the case of black Americans. Small Bus Econ 33, 467–484 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-009-9202-x

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