Measuring school segregation

Abstract

Using only ordinal axioms, we characterize several multigroup school segregation indices: the Atkinson Indices for the class of school districts with a given fixed number of ethnic groups and the Mutual Information Index for the class of all districts. Properties of other school segregation indices are also discussed. In an empirical application, we document a weakening of the effect of ethnicity on school assignment from 1987/8 to 2007/8. We also show that segregation between districts within cities currently accounts for 33% of total segregation. Segregation between states, driven mainly by the distinct residential patterns of Hispanics, contributes another 32%. Properties of other school segregation indices are also discussed. In an empirical application, we document a weakening of the effect of ethnicity on school assignment from 1987/8 to 2007/8. We also show that segregation between districts within cities currently accounts for 33% of total segregation. Segregation between states, driven mainly by the distinct residental patterns of Hispanics, contributes another 32%. * Email addresses: dfrankel@iastate.edu; ovolij@bgu.ac.il. Volij thanks the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (project SEJ2006-05455) for research support. Measuring School Segregation

The joint effect of ethnicity and gender on occupational segregation. An approach based on the Mutual Information Index

“…As these contributions do not contain the segregation that arises from the interaction between ethnicity and gender, the withinterms can be considered the marginal e ects of either ethnicity or gender on overall segregation. 9 8 See Author2 and Author3 (2011) for the proof of this result in the case with only two groups and Frankel and Volij (2011) for the multigroup case.…”

“…As indicated in the Introduction, Frankel and Volij (2011) have shown that the M index is the only segregation index that, in addition to possessing other desirable properties, satis es the SGD property. 6 Therefore, the remainder of this Section is devoted to a brief presentation of the M index and its properties relevant to this study.…”

“…We must also employ an index of segregation that satis es the property of Strong Group Decomposability (SGD ) de ned by Frankel and Volij (2011). The reasons are twofold.…”

“…6 One normalized version of the M index, known as Theil's H index, satis es a weaker decomposability property than SGD (Frankel and Volij 2011;Reardon and Firebaugh 2002). However, Author2 and Author3 (2011) have demonstrated the shortcomings of the H index and the weaker decomposability property that it satis es.…”

“…Fortunately, the Mutual Information Index, M , is a multigroup segregation index that satis es the Strong Group Decomposability property (SGD hereafter). Indeed, Frankel and Volij (2011) have recently shown that the M index is the only segregation index that satis es various acceptable ordinal properties and, in addition, is strongly group decomposable. Therefore, we can only conduct our analysis using the M index.…”