White Parental Flight and Avoidance: Neighborhood Choices in the Era of School District Desegregation

• In Event: 486 - Section on Sociology of Education Paper Session. Education, Policy, and School Reform

Abstract

Parents’ concerns about local schools may be a substantial force driving the intergenerational transmission of inequality and the persistence of racial residential segregation in the post-Civil Rights Era, but direct causal evidence of school-related sorting has been sparse. This study merges mobility histories from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics with local school district data from 1968-1990 to analyze how micro-level residential choices changed in response to mandated school desegregation plans. Event history analyses reveal that desegregation plans triggered a 4.7 percent increase in the likelihood of white households moving out of their local district, and that white parents were the most responsive. An analysis of neighborhood selection shows that the odds of moving into neighborhoods in desegregating districts were almost 50 percent lower for white parents compared to white non-parents. Policy effects, however, varied regionally. In the South, desegregation plans turned formerly attractive neighborhoods into unappealing options for young white parents; in the non-South, white parents avoided neighborhoods in desegregating districts even before the plans were implemented. Across regions, white parents’ avoidance of desegregating districts shaped the geography of unequal opportunity that prevails today.

Author

• Peter M. Rich, Cornell University