Escape from the City? The Role of Race, Income, and Local Public Goods in Post-War Suburbanization

I thank Claudia Goldin, Caroline Hoxby, Lawrence Katz and Robert Margo for their advice and support. This paper has also benefited from conversations with David Abrams, Sandra Black, David Clingingsmith, William Collins, Dora Costa, Carola Frydman, Edward Glaeser, Matthew Kahn, Nora Gordon, Byron Lutz, Sarah Reber, Steven Rivkin, Raven Saks and Bruce Weinberg, and from the suggestions of participants at many conferences and seminars. Lilia Garcia, Michael Latterner, David Lee, Angelina Morris, Danika Stegeman, Mingjie Sun and Qiong Zhou provided excellent and enthusiastic research assistance. Wendy Thomas generously assisted with aspects of the data collection. I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Center for American Political Studies and the Taubman Center for State and Local Government, both at Harvard University, the California Center for Population Research at UCLA, and dissertation fellowships from the Economic History Association and the Rovensky Fellowship in Business and Economic History. Sections of this paper were written while visiting the Minnesota Population Center. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

• August 17, 2007
• May 6, 2008
• January 21, 2010
• August 22, 2011