The Evolution of the Racial Gap in Education and the Legacy of Slavery

Bertocchi, Graziella; Dimico, Arcangelo

doi:10.2139/ssrn.1976523

Download This Paper

Open PDF in Browser

Add Paper to My Library

The Evolution of the Racial Gap in Education and the Legacy of Slavery

IZA Discussion Paper No. 6192

28 Pages Posted: 24 Dec 2011

See all articles by Graziella Bertocchi

Graziella Bertocchi

Università di Modena; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (EIEF); Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Arcangelo Dimico

Queen's University Belfast - Queen's Management School; Queen's University Belfast

Abstract

We study the evolution of racial educational inequality across US states from 1940 to 2000. We show that throughout this period, despite evidence of convergence, the racial gap in attainment between blacks and whites has been persistently determined by the initial gap. We obtain these results with 2SLS estimates where slavery is used as an instrument for the initial gap. The excludability of slavery is preliminarily established by instrumenting it with the share of disembarked slaves from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Using the same approach we also find that income growth is negatively affected by the initial racial gap in education and that slavery affects growth indirectly through this channel.

Keywords: race, inequality, education, slavery, development

JEL Classification: J15, I24, N31, O11

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Bertocchi, Graziella and Dimico, Arcangelo, The Evolution of the Racial Gap in Education and the Legacy of Slavery. IZA Discussion Paper No. 6192, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1976523 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1976523