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

Peter Rich (Sociology and Public Policy, Cornell)

Title: Policy Backlash or Structural Inertia? White Residential Decline from Desegregating City School Districts, 1970-1990

Abstract: The changing racial composition of city school districts over the 1970s and 1980s is often attributed to desegregation policies that propelled White families to move to the suburbs. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, I test this causal hypothesis directly by following family residential sorting before, during, and after desegregation plans were implemented. I find evidence that local desegregation plans indeed triggered White flight from city school districts, but this is only part of the story. Using microsimulations to examine the scale of this effect on population change, I uncover a surprising sociological twist--one that corrects simplistic narratives about this period and that holds lessons for contemporary policy debates.