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AEA Research HighlightsAuthor: American Economic Association
A podcast featuring interviews with economists whose work appears in journals published by the American Economic Association. Language: en Genres: Education, Science, Social Sciences Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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Ep. 99: The wrong side of the tracks
Episode 99
Friday, 15 May, 2026
The place where a child grows up in America shapes their economic future to a significant degree. One long-suspected explanation is racial segregation, but proving whether segregation actually causes worse outcomes—rather than just correlating with them—has been challenging for economists. In a paper in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, authors Eric Chyn, Kareem Haggag, and Bryan A. Stuart provide evidence that racial segregation shapes the long-run economic prospects of American children. Using the placement of railroad tracks in the 19th century, they found that a one standard deviation increase in segregation—roughly the gap between Minneapolis and Philadelphia—cost a Black child from a poor family about $4,200 a year in income as an adult. While lower-income Black children were hit the hardest, segregation also hurt higher-income Black children and lower-income White children. Chyn recently spoke with Tyler Smith about why segregation hurts low-income kids in particular and what his findings imply for policymakers.
