Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP8711
Authors: Graziella Bertocchi; Arcangelo Dimico
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: development; education; inequality; race; slavery
JEL Codes: I24; J15; N31; O11
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Initial racial educational gap in 1940 (I24) | Evolution of educational inequality between whites and blacks from 1940 to 2000 (I24) |
| Slavery (J47) | Initial racial educational gap in 1940 (I24) |
| Share of disembarked slaves (D33) | Initial racial educational gap in 1940 (I24) |
| Slavery (J47) | Educational gap (I24) |