No abstract

Scholars have long argued that gentrification may displace long-term homeowners by causing their property taxes to increase, and policy makers, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have cited this argument as a justification for state laws that limit the increase of residential property taxes. We test the hypotheses that gentrification directly displaces homeowners by increasing their property taxes, and that property tax limitation protects residents of gentrifying neighborhoods from displacement, by merging the Panel Study of Income Dynamics with a decennial Census-tract-level measure of gentrification and a new data set on state-level property tax policy covering the period 1987 to 2009. We find some evidence that property tax pressure can trigger involuntary moves by homeowners, but no evidence that such displacement is more common in gentrifying neighborhoods than elsewhere, nor that property tax limitation protects long-term homeowners in gentrifying neighborhoods. We do find evidence that gentrification directly displaces renters.

We are grateful for comments on this introduction from James Mahoney, Audrey Sacks, and participants of the Thunder of History conference.

Using institutional data on fall 1999 freshman admissions, we document the existence and magnitude of inequalities among California high schools in the access they provide to the University of California (UC). Because high schools are segregated by socioeconomic status and race, we examine how schools that differ on these dimensions also differ in their rates of admission to UC. We find that UC admission rates are grossly unequal between the public and private sectors and within each sector. Different groups, however, face different barriers. Schools where the student body is heavily Latino tend to have low per capita admissions because fewer students apply; schools where the student body is heavily African American tend to have low per capita admissions because fewer applicants are admitted. Our research suggests the need for both high school outreach to increase applications and contextual review of applications to reduce inequalities in the admission of applicants.

This research note examines the conditions under which large U.S. cities pass living wage laws. It updates the only published article on the subject with new data and improved analytic methods. First, it shows that poverty, privatization, and the density of community organizations are associated with policy passage. Second, it provides new quantitative evidence that the living wage movement is, in part, a diffusion process associated with national community-organizing networks.