Much Ado About Nothing? The Role of Primary School Catchment Areas for Ethnic School Segregation. Evidence from a Policy Reform

28 Pages Posted: 13 Jan 2014

See all articles by Anna Makles

Anna Makles

University of Wuppertal - Department of Economics

Kerstin Schneider

University of Wuppertal - Department of Economics

Date Written: December 30, 2013

Abstract

By the 2008/09 school year the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) abolished binding school catchment areas (SCAs) in all municipalities. The reform has been controversial and it was feared that school choice would increase ethnic segregation. Using data on all primary schools, we contribute to this debate by analyzing ethnic segregation before and after the reform. We discuss drawbacks of commonly used segregation indices and their interpretation as well as causality issues. Although there is an increase in segregation over the time period studied, our results show that segregation has not been affected by the policy reform.

Keywords: school catchment areas, ethnic segregation, school choice, policy reform

JEL Classification: I280, J150, H750

Suggested Citation

Makles, Anna and Schneider, Kerstin, Much Ado About Nothing? The Role of Primary School Catchment Areas for Ethnic School Segregation. Evidence from a Policy Reform (December 30, 2013). CESifo Working Paper Series No. 4520, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2378211 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2378211

Anna Makles

University of Wuppertal - Department of Economics ( email )

42097 Wuppertal
Germany

Kerstin Schneider (Contact Author)

University of Wuppertal - Department of Economics ( email )

42097 Wuppertal
Germany

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