The political economy of fair housing laws prior to 1968
By: William J. Collins.
Contributors: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Series: NBER working paper series ;; working paper 10610; Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research : Online) ;; working paper no. 10610.
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Cambridge, MA
Language: eng
Format: Electronic resource
Subjects: Discrimination in housing -- Law and legislation -- Economic aspects.
Description: "The confluence of the Great Migration and the Civil Rights Movement propelled the drive for fair-housing' legislation which attempted to curb overt discrimination in housing markets.  This drive culminated in the passage of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1968.  By that time, 57 percent of the U.S.  population and 41 percent of the African-American population already resided in states with a fair-housing law.  Despite laying the political and administrative groundwork for the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968, the origins and diffusion of these state laws have not received much attention from scholars, let alone been subject to statistical efforts to disentangle multiple influences.  This paper uses hazard models to analyze the diffusion of fair-housing legislation to shed new light on the combination of economic and political forces that facilitated the laws' adoption.  Ceteris paribus, outside the South, states with larger union memberships, more Jewish residents, and more NAACP members passed fair-housing laws sooner than others.  The estimated effects are not undermined by including controls for a variety of competing factors and are supported by historical accounts of the legislative campaigns"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.
Notes: Also available in print.
Includes bibliographical references.
Title from PDF file as viewed on 1/11/2005.
System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Mode of access: World Wide Web.