2013 - Long-Term Consequences of School Segregation: The Impact of School SES, Racial Density and Racial Diversity on Future Earnings

Attribution: Agirdag, Orhan
Researchers: Orhan Agirdag
University Affiliation: Ghent University
Email: Orhan.agirdag@ugent.Be
Research Question:
What is the impact of school socioeconomic status (SES), school racial density, and school racial diversity on students' future earnings?
Published: 0
Journal Name or Institutional Affiliation: Paper Presented at conference
Journal Entry: "Segregation, Immigration, and Educational Inequality" conference, Ghent, Belgium. September
Year: 2013
Findings:
  • The findings fall under three categories; socioeconomic status (SES), racial density, this refers to the number of people of a particular race in a defined jurisdiction, in relation to the size of the area that they occupy, and racial diversity, this refers to the representation of different racial groups.
  • School SES: All else being equal, attending a school with a higher mean SES results in higher earnings (b = 0.040). School SES has a significant interaction with students’ race. School SES has a larger effect on the earnings of Native Americans, Hispanics, and Black students than Whites. However, Whites have an insignificant main effect, indicating the school SES has no impact on the future earnings of White students.
  • School Racial Density: The percentage of White students in the student body has a negative effect (b = -0.013) but is not significant on earnings. The authors note that in other models, this insignificance is explained by the strong relationship between racial density and school SES.
  • School Racial Diversity: Positively related to students’ future income (b = 0.105). School racial diversity significantly interacts with students’ race. School racial diversity has a larger effect on Hispanics than Whites. As with school SES, the main effect for Whites is non-significant, indicating that racial diversity of the school does not have an impact on future earnings of white students.
Keywords: DiversityEarningsOccupational OutcomesPerpetuation TheoryRacial CompositionSegregationSex CompositionRegions: NationalMethodologies: QuantitativeResearch Designs: Secondary DataAnalysis Methods: Multilevel Models Sampling Frame:United States students who were in the 8th grade in 1988 and also hold a part-time or full-time job in 1999/2000.
Sampling Types: RandomAnalysis Units: IndividualData Types: Quantitative-Longitudinal
Data Description:
  • What is the impact of school socioeconomic status (SES), school racial density, and school racial diversity on students’ future earnings?

    Data for the present study is derived from the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988/2000 (NELS). The original NELS sample in 1988 includes over 24,000 8th grade students across 1,000 schools in the United States. The follow up was conducted in the year 2000 and included 12,000 respondents, who by the second intervention were 26 years old. The sample for the current analysis was restricted to respondents who worked part-time or full-time during 1999 and/ or 2000 and who attended schools in 1988 with at least four other respondents. The final sample for analysis consists of 10,363 respondents, clustered in 893 schools.

  • DV: Logged earnings (annual)
  • IV: The main independent variables were three school composition measures – school SES, school racial density, and school racial diversity.
  • Control Variables: School sector, region, urbanicity, gender, race, individual SES, educational attainment.
Theoretical Framework:
Relevance:
Archives: K-12 Integration, Desegregation, and Segregation Abstracts