IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/13462.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Race, Segregation, and Postal Employment: New Evidence on Spatial Mismatch

Author

Listed:
  • Leah Platt Boustan
  • Robert A. Margo

Abstract

The spatial mismatch hypothesis posits that employment decentralization isolated urban blacks from work opportunities. This paper focuses on one large employer that has remained in the central city over the twentieth century - the U.S. Postal Service. We find that blacks substitute towards postal work as other employment opportunities leave the city circa 1960. The response is particularly strong in segregated areas, where black neighborhoods are clustered near the central business district. Furthermore, this pattern only holds for non-mail carriers, many of whom work in central processing facilities. More recently, the relationship between black postal employment and segregation has declined, suggesting that spatial mismatch has become less important over time.

Suggested Citation

  • Leah Platt Boustan & Robert A. Margo, 2007. "Race, Segregation, and Postal Employment: New Evidence on Spatial Mismatch," NBER Working Papers 13462, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13462
    Note: DAE LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w13462.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Collins, William J. & Margo, Robert A., 2000. "Residential segregation and socioeconomic outcomes: When did ghettos go bad?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 239-243, November.
    2. George J. Borjas, 2021. "Ethnicity, Neighborhoods, and Human-Capital Externalities," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Foundational Essays in Immigration Economics, chapter 7, pages 135-160, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    3. Card, David & Rothstein, Jesse, 2007. "Racial segregation and the black-white test score gap," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(11-12), pages 2158-2184, December.
    4. David M. Cutler & Edward L. Glaeser & Jacob L. Vigdor, 1999. "The Rise and Decline of the American Ghetto," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(3), pages 455-506, June.
    5. Elizabeth Oltmans Ananat, 2007. "The Wrong Side(s) of the Tracks Estimating the Causal Effects of Racial Segregation on City Outcomes," NBER Working Papers 13343, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. William J. Collins, 2001. "Race, Roosevelt, and Wartime Production: Fair Employment in World War II Labor Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(1), pages 272-286, March.
    7. Becker, Gary S., 1971. "The Economics of Discrimination," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 2, number 9780226041162, December.
    8. David M. Cutler & Edward L. Glaeser, 1997. "Are Ghettos Good or Bad?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(3), pages 827-872.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alan Manning & Barbara Petrongolo, 2017. "How Local Are Labor Markets? Evidence from a Spatial Job Search Model," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(10), pages 2877-2907, October.
    2. Vigdor, Jacob L., 2010. "Is urban decay bad? Is urban revitalization bad too?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(3), pages 277-289, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Robert Bifulco & Delia Furtado & Stephen L. Ross, 2009. "Why Are Ghettos Bad? Examining the Role of the Metropolitan Educational Environment," Working papers 2009-30, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    2. Elizabeth Oltmans Ananat, 2007. "The Wrong Side(s) of the Tracks Estimating the Causal Effects of Racial Segregation on City Outcomes," NBER Working Papers 13343, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Stephen L. Ross, 2009. "Social Interactions within Cities: Neighborhood Environments and Peer Relationships," Working papers 2009-31, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    4. Collins, William J. & Margo, Robert A., 2001. "Race and Home Ownership: A Century-Long View," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 68-92, January.
    5. Collins, William J., 2021. "The Great Migration of Black Americans from the US South: A guide and interpretation," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    6. Kevin Lang & Jee-Yeon K. Lehmann, 2012. "Racial Discrimination in the Labor Market: Theory and Empirics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 50(4), pages 959-1006, December.
    7. Tito Boeri & Marta De Philippis & Eleonora Patacchini & Michele Pelizzari, 2010. "Moving to Segregation: Evidence from 8 Italian cities," EIEF Working Papers Series 1109, Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (EIEF), revised Apr 2011.
    8. Roland G. Fryer, Jr, 2010. "The Importance of Segregation, Discrimination, Peer Dynamics, and Identity in Explaining Trends in the Racial Achievement Gap," NBER Working Papers 16257, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Mele, Angelo, 2013. "Poisson indices of segregation," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 65-85.
    10. Stephen L. Ross, 2008. "Understanding Racial Segregation: What is known about the Effect of Housing Discrimination," Working papers 2008-15, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics, revised Nov 2008.
    11. Cutler, David M. & Glaeser, Edward L. & Vigdor, Jacob L., 2008. "When are ghettos bad? Lessons from immigrant segregation in the United States," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 759-774, May.
    12. Tito Boeri & Marta De Philippis & Eleonora Patacchini & Michele Pellizzari, 2015. "Immigration, Housing Discrimination and Employment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 125(586), pages 82-114, August.
    13. Panebianco, Fabrizio, 2014. "Socialization networks and the transmission of interethnic attitudes," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 583-610.
    14. Collins, William J. & Margo, Robert A., 2003. "Race and the value of owner-occupied housing, 1940-1990," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 255-286, May.
    15. Zhang, Junfu & Zheng, Liang, 2015. "Are people willing to pay for less segregation? Evidence from U.S. internal migration," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 97-112.
    16. Sofia Wixe & Lars Pettersson, 2020. "Segregation and individual employment: a longitudinal study of neighborhood effects," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 64(1), pages 9-36, February.
    17. Logan, Trevon D. & Parman, John M., 2017. "The National Rise in Residential Segregation," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 77(1), pages 127-170, March.
    18. Christine H. Roch & Michael Rushton, 2008. "Racial Context and Voting over Taxes," Public Finance Review, , vol. 36(5), pages 614-634, September.
    19. Roca, Jorge De la & Ellen, Ingrid Gould & Steil, Justin, 2018. "Does segregation matter for Latinos?," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 129-141.
    20. Bøg, Martin, 2007. "Is Segregation Robust?," MPRA Paper 8774, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing
    • N32 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-
    • N92 - Economic History - - Regional and Urban History - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13462. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.