Can We Legislate Tolerance? Investigating the Impact of State Anti-Discrimination Laws on Racial Attitudes (1945-1965) Öffentlichkeit

Abstract

This study strives to explore the relationship between the adoption of local anti-discrimination laws concerning fair employment, public accommodation, and private housing with the power of enforcement and the percentage of positive racial attitudes observed in a given state. Since different states adopt laws at different times, I employ a staggered Difference in Differences (DiD) design both with and without an efficient estimator. I also conduct correlational analysis on the association between adoption time and racial attitudes, in addition to whether there is a statistically significant difference between the attitudes of treated and never-treated states. The findings of this study suggest that while there is some evidence that anti-discrimination laws may have contributed to increased racial tolerance, the presence of pre-treatment differences, high variance in the data, and issues of small sample size limit causal claims. These results emphasize the need for further research to address data limitations.

Table of Contents

1) Introduction

2) Historical Background

2.1) A Nation on the Brink

2.2) The Civil Rights Movement

2.3) Dreams and Disillusions

3) Literature Review

4) Data

4.1) Data Sources

4.2) Data Cleaning and Preparation

4.3) Descriptive Statistics

5) Methodology

6) Results, 30

6.1) Correlation Analysis

6.2) Staggered DiD

6.3) Staggered DiD with the Efficient Estimator and Never-Treated States as Control Group

6.4) Staggered DiD with the Efficient Estimator and Not-Yet-Treated States as Control Group

7) Discussion

References

About this Master's Thesis

Rights statement

• Permission granted by the author to include this thesis or dissertation in this repository. All rights reserved by the author. Please contact the author for information regarding the reproduction and use of this thesis or dissertation.

School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Economics
Degree	M.S.
Submission	Master's Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Economics, History African American Studies
Stichwort	Anti-discrimination Economic History Civil Rights Movement Public Opinion
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Jones, Margaret, Emory University
Committee Members	Markowitz, Sara, Emory University

Zuletzt geändert

Primary PDF

Thumbnail	Title	Date Uploaded	Actions
	Can We Legislate Tolerance? Investigating the Impact of State Anti-Discrimination Laws on Racial Attitudes (1945-1965) ()	2025-04-03 20:20:01 -0400	Press to Select an action Download

Supplemental Files

Thumbnail	Title	Date Uploaded	Actions