The importance of segregation, discrimination, peer dynamics, and identity in explaining trends in the racial achievement gap

Author / Creator

Fryer, Roland G

Available as

Online

Summary

After decades of narrowing, the achievement gap between black and white school children widened in the 1990s -- a period when the labor market rewards for education were increasing. This presents a...

After decades of narrowing, the achievement gap between black and white school children widened in the 1990s -- a period when the labor market rewards for education were increasing. This presents an important puzzle for economists. In this chapter, I investigate the extent to which economic models of segregation, information-based discrimination, peer dynamics, and identity can explain this puzzle. Under a reasonable set of assumptions, models of peer dynamics and identity are consistent with the time-series data. Segregation and models of discrimination both contradict the trends in important ways.

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