The Impact of Early Investments in Urban School Systems in the United States

Abstract

, and seminar participants at the NBER Summer Institute (DAE), Rhodes College, the Tepper applied micro lunch, Illinois, and the World Economic History Congress for helpful comments. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Place-Based Policies: Opportunity for Deprived Schools or Zone-and-Shame Effect?

“…This paper is also connected to the body of U.S. evidence showing that there are positive impacts of school spending on test scores and educational attainment (Card and Payne, 2002;Papke, 2005;Jackson et al, 2015 and later earnings (Lafortune et al, 2018;Schmick and Shertzer, 2019), and that marginal spending impacts are more pronounced for economically disadvantaged populations (Jackson and Mackevicius, 2021), although they depend on how resources are actually used (Handel and Hanushek, 2022). The evidence for Europe is more mixed, as students in low-income neighborhoods do seem to reap benefits from school extraresources in the UK (Machin et al, 2004(Machin et al, , 2010, but not in Romania (Munteanu, 2022) nor in France (Bénabou et al, 2009;Beffy and Davezies, 2013;Feigenberg et al, 2019;Benhenda and Grenet, 2020).…”

Segmented assimilation and mobility among men in the early 20th century

“…Unlike the Irish or Italians, Germans were well integrated into American culture until the onset of World War I (Abramitzky, Boustan, and Eriksson 2016;Fouka 2019;Higham 1988). Not only were thousands of German-born persons arrested and interned (Glidden 1973;Nagler 1993) during the war, but anti-German sentiment led to the prohibition of German language courses in schools (Lleras-Muney and Shertzer 2015), a reallocation of school resources (Schmick and Shertzer 2020), employment discrimination (Moser 2012), and significant job loss (Kazal 2004). We thus anticipate observing downward mobility among second-generation adults who could not capitalize on their family's prewar success.…”

Discrimination, Migration, and Economic Outcomes: Evidence from World War I

“…Moser (2012) shows that the share of operas by German composers fell from 43% to less than 7%, the use of Otto or Wilhelm as first names for newborn children declined dramatically, and applicants to the NYSE with a German sounding surname were twice as likely to be rejected during the war years. Sauerkraut consumption fell by 75% from 1914 to 1918, hamburgers were renamed liberty steaks (Fouka, 2020), and substantial amounts of school resources were reallocated in response to anti-German hysteria (Schmick and Shertzer, 2020). Aside from the economic and social discrimination, Germans also had to fear physical harm.…”

“…This paper is the first to quantify the direct effects of the war on local anti-German sentiment and its effect on the relocation decisions of Germans in the U.S., as well as on the economic outcomes of the local communities that chose to discriminate. 12 Previous work has used this sudden but temporary taste-based discrimination shock to study assimilation (Fouka, 2019(Fouka, , 2020 or other outcomes related to the labor market (Moser, 2012), innovation and patenting (Moser and Voena, 2012;Baten, Bianchi and Moser, 2017), and spending on urban schools (Schmick and Shertzer, 2020). We add to this literature by introducing a novel measure of anti-German sentiment based on war casualties.…”