Attendance by Section members, Economics Department members, and select others is by invitation only.

Abstract

Asians are the fastest-growing immigrant group to the U.S., representing approximately 6% of the U.S. population. We study how white households respond to the arrival of Asian students in their school district. We develop a simple spatial model of white residence decisions to generate empirically testable predictions about whites’ response to the arrival of Asian students in their district. Using California public school districts over the 2001-2016 period as a case study, our empirical analysis reveals that the arrival of one Asian student leads to 2.5 white departures in suburban areas. We provide suggestive evidence that this flight is mainly due to whites’ aversion to school competition with stereotypically higher-performing Asian peers.