Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/58925 
Year of Publication: 
2011
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 6192
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
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.
Subjects: 
race
inequality
education
slavery
development
JEL: 
J15
I24
N31
O11
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
200.45 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.