Universal Vouchers and Racial Segregation

Opponents of school vouchers often argue that school vouchers will lead to .white flight. from public schools that are disproportionately non-white, creating more racially segregated schools. In this paper, we present new evidence on whether universal vouchers will lead to a systematic departure of whites from predominantly minority schools increasing racial segregation in those schools. Specifically, we use data on vote outcomes from a state-wide universal voucher initiative to estimate the likelihood that white households with children currently in public schools will use vouchers to switch out of more-integrated schools. Our results indicate that white households with children attending schools with large concentrations of non-white schoolchildren are significantly more likely to support school vouchers, an effect that is absent for non-white households with children and households without children. Finally, follow-up analyses suggest that this result is driven less by race, per se, but more by other student characteristics that are correlated with race.