National Bureau of Economic Research

Racial segregation is often blamed for some of the achievement gap between blacks and whites. This report studies the effects of school and neighborhood segregation on the relative SAT scores of black students across different metropolitan areas, using large microdata samples for the 1998-2001 test cohorts. Models include detailed controls for the family background of individual test-takers, school-level controls for selective participation in the test, and city-level controls for racial composition, income, and region. The report finds robust evidence that the black-white test score gap is higher in more segregated cities.
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