Measuring school segregation

doi:10.1016/j.jet.2010.10.008

Journal of Economic Theory

Volume 146, Issue 1, January 2011, Pages 1-38

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jet.2010.10.008 Get rights and content

Abstract

Using only ordinal axioms, we characterize several multigroup school segregation indices: the Atkinson indices for the class of school districts with a given fixed number of ethnic groups and the Mutual Information index for the class of all districts. Properties of other school segregation indices are also discussed. In an empirical application, we document a weakening of the effect of ethnicity on school assignment from 1987/1988 to 2007/2008. We also show that segregation between districts within cities currently accounts for 33% of total segregation. Segregation between states, driven mainly by the distinct residential patterns of Hispanics, contributes another 32%.

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We know little about how ethnic geography, i.e., the distribution of ethnic groups across space, shapes comparative economic, political and social development. To make progress and to harness the growing availability of spatially explicit data, we need indices summarizing key aspects of ethnic geography. We develop and axiomatize a novel index of ethnic segregation that takes both ethnic and spatial distances between individuals into account. We can decompose this index into indices of generalized ethnic fractionalization, spatial dispersion, and the alignment of spatial and ethnic distances. For our application, we compute different country-level versions of the segregation index and its components based on either ethnographic maps or geo-referenced survey data. Reassuringly, the different versions of the segregation index are highly correlated. We explore the relation of our indices to (i) existing measures of ethnic segregation and diversity; (ii) climatic and geographical factors; and (iii) the quality of government, economic development, and trust.
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Citation Excerpt :
We are, however, the first to connect it to school segregation and quantify its importance for that.5 Several studies examine the properties of different segregation measures (Frankel and Volij, 2011; Allen et al., 2015; Yamaguchi, 2017). We build on these studies in Section 3 where we introduce the school segregation measures that we use in this study.
This paper examines heterogeneity of school preferences between ethnic and social groups and quantifies the importance of this heterogeneity for school segregation. We use rich data from the secondary-school match in Amsterdam. Our key findings are that heterogeneity of preferences for schools is substantial and that 40% of school segregation by ethnicity and close to 25% of school segregation by household income, can be attributed to it. Ability tracking is the other main determinant of school segregation. Results from policy simulations indicate that minority quotas reduce segregation within ability tracks considerably, but this comes at the cost of many students receiving less-preferred assignments and a higher share of unassigned students.
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^☆: We are grateful to an associate editor and three anonymous referees for useful comments. Volij thanks the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (projects SEJ2006-05455 and SEJ2009-11213) for research support.

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Measuring school segregation☆

Abstract

J. Econ. Theory

J. Public Econ.

J. Urban Econ.

J. Econ. Theory

J. Econ. Theory

Math. Soc. Sci.

J. Econ. Theory

Lectures on Functional Equations and Their Applications

A probability model for the measurement of ecological segregation

Social Forces

Equivalent comparisons of experiments

Ann. Math. Statist.

Race and school quality since Brown v. board of education

Brookings Pap. Econ. Act. Microeconomics

Decomposable income inequality measures

Econometrica

Public school segregation in metropolitan areas

Land Econ.

Achievement and segregation in secondary schools: a further look at public and private school differences

Soc. Educ.

Elements of Information Theory

The measurement of the inequality of incomes

Econ. J.

A measure of segregation based on social interactions

Quart. J. Econ.

The Measurement of Segregation in the Labor Force

A note on sex segregation in professional occupations

Explorations Econ. Res.

Desegregation and black dropout rates

Amer. Econ. Rev.