Can You Move to Opportunity? Evidence from the Great Migration
American Economic Review · 2022 · Volume 112 · Issue 2
Abstract
This paper shows that racial composition shocks during the Great Migration (1940–1970) reduced the gains from growing up in the northern United States for Black families and can explain 27 percent of the region's racial upward mobility gap today. I identify northern Black share increases by interacting pre-1940 Black migrants' location choices with predicted southern county out-migration. Locational changes, not negative selection of families, explain lower upward mobility, with persistent segregation and increased crime and policing as plausible mechanisms. The case of the Great Migration provides a more nuanced view of moving to opportunity when destination reactions are taken into account.
Keywords
State and Local Government: Health, Education, Welfare, Public Pensions, State and Local Government: Other Expenditure Categories, Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants, Non-labor Discrimination, Job, Occupational, and Intergenerational Mobility, Promotion, Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law, Economic History: Labor and Consumers, Demography, Health, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy: U.S., Canada: 1913-, Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics: Regional Migration, Regional Labor Markets, Population, Neighborhood Characteristics
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