Racial Heterogeneity and California School District Tax Approval

• In Event: 2131 - Race, Sexuality, and Gender in Politics

Abstract

Racial diversity has long been associated with reduced support for state and local taxes. We explore this association for voter-approved, school districts taxes in California. Local, flat-rate parcel taxes are the only public means California districts have to increase funds from within-district properties and are selectively enacted. Using an original data set of tax measures proposed and adopted in California school districts, we measure the associational influence of racial heterogeneity on the results of district decisions to propose measures and voter approval of school district parcel taxes in the period between 1997 and 2010. Our findings yield three main insights. First, racial composition matters most when school district officials are deciding whether to place a tax measure proposal on the ballot. This is the agenda-setting stage; voter-approval of measures is the policy-choice stage. School boards in districts with more Black and Latinx students are less likely to propose parcel tax increases, but voters in such districts are no less likely to approve parcel taxes after they have been proposed. Second, the prevalence of Black and Latinx students is negatively associated with the proposal of new parcel taxes regardless of the presence or absence of a racial generation gap, or difference between the proportion of White young people and White residents over age 65. It is not the fact that students belong to an out-group relative to elders that matters; it is the specific racial identities of the students, which we measure as the proportion of the enrolled student population that is Black and Latinx. Third, we find no evidence that the policy characteristics we consider moderate any effect of racial context on voting behavior.

Authors

• Jennifer Marie Nations, University of California-San Diego

• Isaac William Martin, University of California San Diego