Department of Marketing, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089.
Department of Marketing, Wisconsin School of Business, The University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2022 Aug 30;119(35):e2117979119. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2117979119. Epub 2022 Aug 22.
This research examines how school choice impacts school segregation. Specifically, this work demonstrates that even if parents do not take the racial demographics of schools into account, preference differences between Black and White parents for other school attributes can still result in segregation. These preference differences stem from motivational differences in pursuit of social status. Given that the de facto US racial hierarchy assigns Black people to a lower social status, Black parents are more motivated to seek schools that signal that they can improve their children's status. Simulations of parental school decisions at scale show that preference differences under an unmitigated school-choice policy lead to more segregated schools, impacting more than half a million US children for every 3-percentage-point increase in school-choice availability. In contrast, if Black and White parents have similar preferences, unmitigated school choice would reduce racial segregation. This research may inform public policy concerning school choice and school segregation.
本研究探讨了学校选择如何影响学校隔离。具体来说，这项工作表明，即使家长不考虑学校的种族人口统计数据，黑人和白人家长对其他学校属性的偏好差异仍然可能导致隔离。这些偏好差异源于追求社会地位的动机差异。鉴于事实上的美国种族等级制度将黑人置于较低的社会地位，黑人父母更有动力寻求那些表明他们可以提高孩子地位的学校。对大规模的家长学校决策进行模拟表明，在不受限制的学校选择政策下，偏好差异会导致学校更加隔离，每增加 3 个百分点的学校选择机会，就会影响超过 50 万名美国儿童。相比之下，如果黑人和白人家长有相似的偏好，不受限制的学校选择将减少种族隔离。这项研究可能为有关学校选择和学校隔离的公共政策提供信息。
