Why Are Ghettos Bad? Examining the Role of the Metropolitan Educational Environment

Relative to whites, blacks that reside in highly segregated metropolitan areas have worse educational and labor market outcomes than those that reside in less segregated areas. Using data from the 1990 U.S. Census combined with measures of metropolitan educational environment created from the Common Core of Data (CCD), we test whether the strong empirical relationship between residential segregation and black outcomes can be attributed to the educational environment in those metropolitan areas. We find that our measures of metropolitan educational environment can explain a substantial fraction of the effect of segregation on educational outcomes and idleness.