Income Segregation and Intergenerational Mobility: Evidence from U.S. Highways

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: In recent decades, racial segregation has declined while income segregation has increased and continues to intensify, but past studies have failed to estimate the effects of income segregation through causal methods. I measure the intergenerational mobility gap between children with low income and high income parents by gender in response to higher levels of income segregation at the county-level. A causal estimate is approached through an original instrumental variables strategy that uses income sorting of census tracts following the construction of the interstate highway system. Neighborhoods in close proximity to a highway experience a negative disamenity effect from the noise and pollution generated from the highway but also receive access benefits from using the faster transportation network. I find that income segregation leads to less upward mobility for children from both low income and high income backgrounds, and in particular exacerbates income disparity among boys. These results show that the correlational estimates of previous studies have underestimated the effects of income segregation and shed light on the impacts of transportation infrastructure on the shape of the income distribution.

Type of resource	text
Date created	2017 - 2018

Author	Zhang, Laura

Subject	Department of Economics
Subject	Stanford University
Subject	Undergraduate Honors Thesis Program
Genre	Thesis

Related item	Title 2018 David M. Kennedy Honors Thesis Prize and 2018 Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research
Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/sm018qj3430

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Preferred Citation: Zhang, Laura. (2018). Income Segregation and Intergenerational Mobility: Evidence from U.S. Highways. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/sm018qj3430

Stanford University, Department of Economics, Honors Theses

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