TY - JOUR
T1 - Can You Move to Opportunity? Evidence from the Great Migration
AU - Derenoncourt, Ellora
N1 - Funding Information:
* Department of Economics, Princeton University and NBER (email: ellora.derenoncourt@princeton.edu). Thomas Lemieux was the coeditor for this article. I thank the coeditor for his valuable guidance, and four anonymous referees for their useful feedback. I thank Joshua Abel, Ran Abramitzky, Joseph Altonji, Kirill Borusyak, Leah Boustan, Raj Chetty, Krishna Dasaratha, Melissa Dell, Rebecca Diamond, James Feigenbaum, Edward Glaeser, Claudia Goldin, Nathaniel Hendren, Maximilian Kasy, Lawrence Katz, Michal Kolesár, Ilyana Kuziemko, Trevon Logan, Robert Margo, Elizabeth Mishkin, Christopher Muller, Suresh Naidu, Nathan Nunn, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, Heather Sarsons, Niharika Singh, Isaac Sorkin, Marianne Wanamaker, Gavin Wright, Chenzi Xu, and numerous seminar and conference participants for many helpful comments. Price Fishback, William Collins, Robert Margo, Vicky Fouka, Soumyajit Mazumder, and Marco Tabellini generously shared data. Cate Brock, Colin Dunkley, Ariel Gomez, Sergio Gonzales, Julian Duggan, Seung Yong Song, Lukas Althoff, and Will McGrew provided excellent research assistance. This work was supported by the Harvard Lab for Economic Applications and Policy and Russell Sage Foundation award 83-17-19. Any opinions expressed are those of the author alone and should not be construed as representing the opinions of the Foundation.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 American Economic Association. All rights reserved.
PY - 2022/2
Y1 - 2022/2
N2 - This paper shows that racial composition shocks during the Great Migration (1940–1970) reduced the gains from growing up in the northern United States for Black families and can explain 27 percent of the region’s racial upward mobility gap today. I identify northern Black share increases by interacting pre-1940 Black migrants’ location choices with predicted southern county out-migration. Locational changes, not negative selection of families, explain lower upward mobility, with persistent segregation and increased crime and policing as plausible mechanisms. The case of the Great Migration provides a more nuanced view of moving to opportunity when destination reactions are taken into account.
AB - This paper shows that racial composition shocks during the Great Migration (1940–1970) reduced the gains from growing up in the northern United States for Black families and can explain 27 percent of the region’s racial upward mobility gap today. I identify northern Black share increases by interacting pre-1940 Black migrants’ location choices with predicted southern county out-migration. Locational changes, not negative selection of families, explain lower upward mobility, with persistent segregation and increased crime and policing as plausible mechanisms. The case of the Great Migration provides a more nuanced view of moving to opportunity when destination reactions are taken into account.
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U2 - 10.1257/AER.20200002
DO - 10.1257/AER.20200002
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85124912417
SN - 0002-8282
VL - 112
SP - 369
EP - 408
JO - American Economic Review
JF - American Economic Review
IS - 2
ER -