Diverging Incomes, School Desegration, and Private SchoolEnrollment

Although only about a tenth of all elementary and high school students in the country attend private schools, those who do attend private schools are not a random sample of the school-age population. To the extent that they come from more affluent families or from families with a strong taste for education, the absence of these students necessarily influences the composition of public schools. The withdrawal of these students may exert peer-group influences on other students and may reduce political support for the public schools by parents whose children no longer attend them. The objective of this paper is to analyze patterns of private school enrollment, focusing on two factors - income distribution and public school desegregation. The paper uses data from U.S. counties to analyze the demand for private schools, and finds that enrollment is affected by income differences and by the presence of nonwhites in the public schools. Further analysis of other measures of white avoidance of desegregated public schools strongly suggests, however, that private schools are not the major form of avoidance of desegregated public schools.