| This paper examines the extent to which jurisdictional fragmentation and/or exclusionary zoning laws contribute to spatial segregation of the U.S. population by income and race. While there is vast literature on the efficiency properties of the Tiebout equilibrium, the focus here is on equity---the spatial distribution by race and income of tax costs and access to public services. Empirical work analyzes both all MSA's in the U.S., and the NY CMSA in depth. The empirical work shows that jurisdictional fragmentation generally has greater effects on racial segregation for higher income households than for overall racial segregation, without distinguishing income levels. Dissimilarity by race is highly prominent in Southern states, where racial-separation laws are still on the books. Income segregation is also found to be higher when there are more communities.; The empirical model using the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut CMSA data shows that zoning measures such as the minimum lot size increase the degree of racial and income dissimilarity among school districts. However, the impact from exclusionary zoning appears relatively weaker than that of jurisdictional fragmentation on residential segregation. A two standard deviations increase in Tiebout choice or minimum lot size leads to 0.08% and 0.06% increase in racial segregation respectively. If the magnitudes of the effects from jurisdictional fragmentation (measured by the number of school districts in relation to the population) and zoning ordinance are comparatively plausible, jurisdictional fragmentation, hence may be a relatively more important cause of spatial stratification by income and color. Segregation attributed to exclusionary zoning ordinances per se is hard to detect, and can be a by-product of jurisdictional fragmentation. |
