IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/usf/wpaper/2024-02.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Residential Segregation at Physical Neighborhood Boundaries

Author

Listed:
  • Kenneth Whaley

    (South Florida)

Abstract

Physical boundaries delineate neighborhoods and are distinguishable from administrative boundaries like school districts and county lines. This paper sheds light on historic railroad placement as a predictor of contemporary segregation by employing a digitized map of Texas railroads circa 1911 to compare census block groups separated by train tracks today. Using a boundary discontinuity design, I first document an unconditional house price premium of 21% to live on the high income side of the tracks. Exploiting distinct variation in race and income demographics at railroad boundaries, I obtain hedonic estimates of the price premium for white population share and income composition. Conditional on differences in school quality and access to private consumption amenities, households are willing to pay up to 16% of home price for the race and income composition available on the high income side of the tracks.

Suggested Citation

  • Kenneth Whaley, 2024. "Residential Segregation at Physical Neighborhood Boundaries," Working Papers 2024-02, University of South Florida, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:usf:wpaper:2024-02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.usf.edu/arts-sciences/departments/economics/documents/wpaper/2024-02.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Keele, Luke J. & Titiunik, Rocío, 2015. "Geographic Boundaries as Regression Discontinuities," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 23(1), pages 127-155, January.
    2. Yinger, John, 2015. "Hedonic markets and sorting equilibria: Bid-function envelopes for public services and neighborhood amenities," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 9-25.
    3. Sandra E. Black, 1999. "Do Better Schools Matter? Parental Valuation of Elementary Education," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(2), pages 577-599.
    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. Patrick Bayer & Fernando Ferreira & Robert McMillan, 2007. "A Unified Framework for Measuring Preferences for Schools and Neighborhoods," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(4), pages 588-638, August.
    6. Elizabeth Oltmans Ananat, 2011. "The Wrong Side(s) of the Tracks: The Causal Effects of Racial Segregation on Urban Poverty and Inequality," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(2), pages 34-66, April.
    7. Albert Saiz, 2010. "The Geographic Determinants of Housing Supply," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(3), pages 1253-1296.
    8. David Card & Alexandre Mas & Jesse Rothstein, 2008. "Tipping and the Dynamics of Segregation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(1), pages 177-218.
    9. Witte, Ann D & Sumka, Howard J & Erekson, Homer, 1979. "An Estimate of a Structural Hedonic Price Model of the Housing Market: An Application of Rosen's Theory of Implicit Markets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(5), pages 1151-1173, September.
    10. Joseph Gyourko & Albert Saiz & Anita Summers, 2008. "A New Measure of the Local Regulatory Environment for Housing Markets: The Wharton Residential Land Use Regulatory Index," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 45(3), pages 693-729, March.
    11. Eric Chyn & Kareem Haggag & Bryan A. Stuart, 2022. "The Effects of Racial Segregation on Intergenerational Mobility: Evidence from Historical Railroad Placement," NBER Working Papers 30563, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Patrick Bajari & Matthew E. Kahn, 2005. "Estimating Housing Demand With an Application to Explaining Racial Segregation in Cities," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 23, pages 20-33, January.
    13. Hodgson, Charles, 2018. "The effect of transport infrastructure on the location of economic activity: Railroads and post offices in the American West," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 59-76.
    14. Bayer, Patrick & Casey, Marcus & Ferreira, Fernando & McMillan, Robert, 2017. "Racial and ethnic price differentials in the housing market," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 91-105.
    15. Atack, Jeremy, 2013. "On the Use of Geographic Information Systems in Economic History: The American Transportation Revolution Revisited," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 73(2), pages 313-338, June.
    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. Vikram Maheshri & Kenneth Whaley, 2024. "Boundaries Generate Discontinuities in the Urban Landscape," Working Papers 2024-04, University of South Florida, Department of Economics.

    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. Vikram Maheshri & Kenneth Whaley, 2024. "Boundaries Generate Discontinuities in the Urban Landscape," Working Papers 2024-04, University of South Florida, Department of Economics.
    2. Victoria Gregory & Julian Kozlowski & Hannah Rubinton, 2022. "The Impact of Racial Segregation on College Attainment in Spatial Equilibrium," Working Papers 2022-036, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, revised 27 Nov 2024.
    3. Resseger, Matthew, 2022. "The Impact of Land Use Regulation on Racial Segregation: Evidence from Massachusetts Zoning Borders," Working Papers 11220, George Mason University, Mercatus Center.
    4. Elster, Yael & Zussman, Noam, 2024. "Minorities and property values: Evidence from residential buildings in Israel," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    5. Carlos F. Avenancio-León & Troup Howard, 2020. "The Assessment Gap: Racial Inequalities in Property Taxation," Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers 34, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    6. H. Spencer Banzhaf & Kyle Mangum, 2019. "Capitalization as a Two-Part Tariff: The Role of Zoning," NBER Working Papers 25699, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Lévêque, Christophe & Saleh, Mohamed, 2018. "Does industrialization affect segregation? Evidence from nineteenth-century Cairo," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 40-61.
    8. Kulkarni, Nirupama & Malmendier, Ulrike, 2022. "Homeownership segregation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 123-149.
    9. 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.
    10. Florent Dubois & Christophe Muller, 2017. "Segregation and the Perception of the Minority," Working Papers halshs-01520308, HAL.
    11. Li, Qiang, 2014. "Ethnic diversity and neighborhood house prices," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 21-38.
    12. W. Ben Mccartney & John Orellana‐Li & Calvin Zhang, 2024. "Political Polarization Affects Households' Financial Decisions: Evidence from Home Sales," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 79(2), pages 795-841, April.
    13. Rebecca Diamond, 2016. "The Determinants and Welfare Implications of US Workers' Diverging Location Choices by Skill: 1980-2000," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(3), pages 479-524, March.
    14. Tammy Leonard & Xi Yang & Lei Zhang, 2021. "The impact of land use regulation across the conditional distribution of home prices: an application of quantile regression for group-level treatments," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 66(3), pages 655-676, June.
    15. Lei Zhang & Tammy Leonard, 2021. "External validity of hedonic price estimates: Heterogeneity in the price discount associated with having Black and Hispanic neighbors," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(1), pages 62-85, January.
    16. Baum-Snow, Nathaniel & Ferreira, Fernando, 2015. "Causal Inference in Urban and Regional Economics," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 3-68, Elsevier.
    17. Nicolai V. Kuminoff & V. Kerry Smith & Christopher Timmins, 2010. "The New Economics of Equilibrium Sorting and its Transformational Role for Policy Evaluation," NBER Working Papers 16349, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Chapelle, Guillaume & Domènech Arumí, Gerard & Gobbi, Paula Eugenia, 2023. "Housing, Neighborhoods and Inequality," CEPR Discussion Papers 17969, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    19. Geoffrey K. Turnbull & Minrong Zheng, 2021. "A Meta‐Analysis of School Quality Capitalization in U.S. House Prices," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 49(4), pages 1120-1171, December.
    20. Nicolai V. Kuminoff & V. Kerry Smith & Christopher Timmins, 2013. "The New Economics of Equilibrium Sorting and Policy Evaluation Using Housing Markets," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(4), pages 1007-1062, December.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • O18 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure

    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:usf:wpaper:2024-02. 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: Diogo Baerlocher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deusfus.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.