City Segregation and the College Degree Gap

neighborhoods are multifold: Historical discrimination in the real estate market, redlining, and racial covenants all contributed to the establishment of segregated neighborhoods for Black and White families across the U.S. Some of those factors have since disappeared, but the segregation across neighborhoods within different cities has not. Many researchers have found that this segregation is not innocuous; it has a negative impact on a range of outcomes for Black children (Cutler and Glaeser, 1997; Ananat, 2011). This essay examines the relationship between a city’s segregation level and the gap in college attainment between Black and White children in those cities. The data for this essay come from two sources: the 2000 Census and the commuting zone dataset of child outcomes from Opportunity Insights. The census data record the population of different races in each census tract, which is a subdivision of a county with a population averaging about 4,000 people.1 The dataset of outcomes by commuting zone—a geographic area designed to reflect the part of a local economy where people live and work—records the average level of degree attainment by race for the area. We use a dissimilarity index as a measure of segregation. To measure dissimilarity between neighborhoods in a city, we first calculate the share of the city’s Black population and the share of the city’s non-Black population that live in each census tract. We use commuting zones as our definition of an overall city. Then, we take the absolute value of City Segregation and the College Degree Gap