Residential segregation and socioeconomic outcomes: When did ghettos go bad?

Cutler and Glaeser (1997) show that urban residential segregation has a strong adverse effect on labor market and social outcomes of young African-Americans relative to whites. We show that this effect is a fairly recent historical phenomenon. There is little evidence of such an effect from 1940 to 1970; rather, it emerged between 1970 and 1980, and it grew stronger during the 1980s.