325 publications from this institution
:Do the geographic contexts in which disadvantaged children are raised influence whether they have difficulties in elementary school? We address this question by estimating Cox proportional hazard models with instrumental variable measures of context, using data for 410 low-income Latino and African American children who lived in Denver public housing before age six. The Denver Housing Authority's procedure for allocating families to dwellings mimics random assignment, thus offering an unusual natural experiment for measuring context effects isolated from geographic selection bias. We find that several socioeconomic and demographic contextual indicators are statistically and substantively important predictors of low-income Latino and African American children's difficulties in elementary school, though sometimes in nonlinear and interactive ways. Generally, the hazard of being assigned to special education classes, suspended, or forced to repeat a grade is greater in neighborhoods with higher occupational prestige and percentages of immigrants and lower in those with higher percentages of African American residents.
In 2013 Detroit became the largest municipality to declare bankruptcy. Unfortunately, bankruptcy does not treat the long-term cause of Detroit’s financial crisis: the ongoing fiscal death spiral triggered by loss of industrial, commercial and residential tax base starting in the 1950s. The first loss came from manufacturers who abandoned older factories in the city in favor of suburban locations. The second came from the federal government, whose guarantees for FHA-VA mortgages and subsidies for expressway construction spurred suburbanization of Detroit’s (overwhelmingly white) middle class. Detroit trimmed services and raised tax rates in response. But this made it an increasingly uncompetitive location, thereby further contracting its property and income tax bases, forcing still more cuts in services and increases in tax rates. What is required to break out of the fiscal death spiral in which Detroit finds itself is substantially more federal and state revenue sharing and regional growth management.
Summary of Findings HDS2000 finds that discrimination still persists in both rental and sales markets of large metropolitan areas nationwide, but that its incidence has generally declined since 1989 (see Exhibit ES-1). Only Hispanic renters face essentially the same incidence of discrimination today that they did in 1989. Otherwise, the incidence of consistent adverse treatment against minority homeseekers has declined over the last decade. 3 Exhibit ES-1: Consistent Adverse Treatment Against Blacks and Hispanics, 1989 and 2000 0.0%5.0%10.0%15.0%20.0%25.0%30.0%35.0%Black Hispanic Black Hispanic percent 1989 2000Rental Sales Metropolitan Rental Markets. African Americans still face discrimination when they search for rental housing in metropolitan markets nationwide. Whites were consistently favored over blacks in 21.6 percent of tests. In particular, whites were more likely to receive information 3 Note that the 1989 results presented here are not exactly the same as those that were reported in 1989. Comparable measures have been constructed from both years, but these are not exactly the same treatment measures as reported in 1989. Some 1989 indicators could not be replicated because of changes in testing protocols. Other measures have been more precisely defined or revised for greater clarity. See Annex 5 for a complete discussion of changes in the 1989 treatment measures.
