Associate Professor Stephen Billings' work with colleagues from Harvard University Graduate School of Education and Columbia University Graduate School of Business looks at "School Segregation, Educational Attainment, and Crime: Evidence from the End of Busing in Charlotte-Mecklenburg."
"The results show clearly that it is the combination of race and income segregation that leads to increases in crime. Minority males have significantly more arrests and days incarcerated when they are assigned to schools with more poor minorities. However, we find no impact on crime of being assigned to schools with more non-poor minorities or poor non-minorities," says the study by Stephen Billings (UNC Charlotte), David Deming (Harvard Graduate School of Education) and Jonah Rockoff (Columbia University Graduate School of Business) published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics earlier this year.
The research has been featured in The Charlotte Observer and Slate magazine.
For more information, read the full journal article in The Quarterly Journal of Economics or access an earlier working paper on the website of the National Bureau of Economic Research.