White Flight's Surprising 'Silver Lining'

"White flight" from American cities in the second half of the 20th century is associated with a number of problems that plague places like Detroit and Chicago to this day: the decline of urban school systems, the persistence of racial segregation, the job sprawl that pushed employment prospects even further from the urban poor.

Historic data suggests, however, that the mass exodus of the white middle class from central cities had one positive result for the people left behind: Suburban white flight helped boost black homeownership in America. And the extent of the effect is striking. Economists Leah Boustan of UCLA and Robert Margo of Boston University have estimated that for every 1,000 white households that moved out of central cities for the suburbs between 1940 and 1980, about 100 black households became homeowners.