Evaluating the role of Brown v. Board of Education in school equalization, desegregation, and the Income of African Americans

Orley Ashenfelter, William J. Collins, Albert Yoon

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

59 Scopus citations

Abstract

The public profile of the Brown v. Board of Education decision tends to overshadow the well-established fact that racial disparities in school resources in the South began narrowing 20 years before the Brown decision and that school desegregation did not begin on a large scale in the Deep South until ten years after the Brown decision. We instead view Brown as a highly visible marker of public policy's mid-century reversal on matters of race. When we examine the labor market outcomes of male workers in 1990, we find that southern-born blacks who would have finished their schooling just before effective desegregation occurred in the South fared poorly compared to southern-born blacks who followed behind them in school by just a few years, relative to northern-born blacks in same age cohorts.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)213-248
Number of pages36
JournalAmerican Law and Economics Review
Volume8
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2006

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Finance
  • Law

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