TY  - JOUR
AU  - Kremer,Michael
TI  - How Much Does Sorting Increase Inequality?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 5566
PY  - 1996
Y2  - May 1996
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5566
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5566.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Michael Kremer
Harvard University
Department of Economics
Littauer Center M20
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/495-9145
Fax: 617/495-7730
E-Mail: mkremer@fas.harvard.edu
AB  - Social commentators from William Julius Wilson to Charles Murray have argued that increased sorting of people into internally homogeneous" neighborhoods,schools, and marriages is spurring long-run inequality.  Cali- bration of a formal model suggests that these fears are misplaced.  In order to increase the steady-state standard deviation of education by one percent, the correlation between neighbors' education would have to double, or the correlation between spouses' education would have to increase by one-third. In fact, both correlations have declined slightly over the past few decades. Sorting has somewhat more significant effects on intergenerational mobility than on inequality."
ER  -