Steppingstone or Stumbling Block? Integration, Public Housing and Upward Mobility

• In Event: Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 6. Inequality in Housing and Neighborhoods

Abstract

Federally sponsored public housing in the 1930s was generally segregated, with separate developments for Blacks and Whites. However, a share of developments were integrated – often due to the explicit pressure of New Deal liberals like First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, and Special Assistant Robert Weaver. This varied by degree: some projects were segregated internally (with separate buildings in the same development restricted to certain races), others were integrated tokenistic-ly (with a small fraction of units occupied by residents of a different race), and still others were integrated more meaningfully. In this paper, we take advantage of the natural experiment created by variable integration policies to test the notion that living in a racially-mixed environment positively impacts life outcomes. Specifically, we use de-anonymized IPUMS Multigenerational Longitudinal Panel (MLP) census data to identify Black households who lived in 18 public housing developments in 15 cities in the Northeast and Midwest in 1940, identifying paired developments based on region. We then use the linked 1950 census data to examine how adults and children growing up in the integrated environment differed from their segregated counterparts. Using the linked census data, we identify differences in terms of occupational status, home ownership, and the type of neighborhood public housing residents lived in ten years hence; using these variables as proxies for the advantages of social mobility and increased tolerance that are theorized to follow from living in an integrated environment.

Author

• Lance Freeman, University of Pennsylvania