CSI’s Inequality Discussion Groups bring together Cornell faculty and graduate students from around campus to discuss and improve their in-progress research.

Title: Inequality in the Competition for Access to High-Achieving and High-Growth Schools Across Metropolitan Area Housing Markets (with Christian Sprague and Haowen Zheng). 

Abstract: Despite the well-documented and highly theorized link between family resources, residential location, and access to high-achieving public schools, past research has not measured how this relationship varies across metropolitan area housing markets. In this study, we fill this gap using a novel, highly granular dataset of Zillow housing sales records linked to block-level measures of the average academic achievement and growth scores of locally accessible schools. Across the 122  largest metropolitan areas, we find wide variation in the relationship between house price and access to school academic achievement. This variation is not merely explained by differences in absolute housing costs; it also reflects differential arrangements in the structure of local housing and education markets. These descriptive findings have broad implications at the intersection of inequality, residential segregation, and education research.