Venue: The Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, 1 Towerview Drive, Durham, NC 27708-0120
Presentation
The Effects of Racial Residential Segregation on City-Level Health Disparities: Evidence from the “Wrong Sides of the Tracks”
At the metropolitan level there is a striking negative correlation between residential racial segregation and population health—-particularly for black residents—-but it is widely recognized that this correlation may not be causal. This paper provides a novel test of the causal relationship between segregation and population health outcomes and health disparities by exploiting the arrangements of railroad tracks in the 19th century to isolate plausibly exogenous variation in cities' susceptibility to segregation after the Great Migration of African-Americans in the 20th century (Ananat 2007). By comparing cities that were quasi-randomly assigned different levels of racial residential segregation, I will estimate the effects of segregation per se on the morbidity and mortality of cities' black, white, and overall populations. I will explore possible channels through which segregation may cause these differences, such as the location of health resources (e.g. hospitals) and liabilities (e.g. pollution sources).