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Paying for
Progress: Conditional Grants and the
Desegregation of Southern Public Schools (with
Nora Gordon, Ethan Lewis, and Sarah Reber).
The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Forthcoming February
2010 |
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Abstract: This paper examines how a large
conditional grants program influenced school desegregation in the American
South. Exploiting newly collected
archival data and quasi-experimental variation in potential per-pupil federal
grants, we show that school districts with more at risk in 1966 were more
likely to desegregate just enough to receive their funds. Although the program did not raise the
exposure of blacks to whites like later court orders, districts with larger
grants at risk in 1966 were less likely to be under court order through 1970,
suggesting that tying federal funds to nondiscrimination reduced the burden
of desegregation on federal courts. |
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Most recent version (April 2009) |
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