The long run impact of childhood interracial contact on residential segregation

This paper investigates whether interracial contact in childhood impacts residential choices in adulthood. We exploit quasi-random variation in the share of black students across cohorts within US schools. We find that more black peers of the same gender in a grade induces whites to live in blacker census tracts more than 20 years after exposure. We do not find any effect on labor market outcomes or other neighborhood characteristics, suggesting the most likely mechanism is a change in preferences of respondents