Neighborhood Gerrymandering- Becker

Posner has a fine discussion of gerrymandering of voting districts. However, it might not be easy to get a non-partisan committee to determine boundaries because legislators will be partisan in their choice of committee members.

I will mainly discuss another form of gerrymandering; namely of districts determining attendance at different public schools. Generally, students who live in a particular district attend the public schools in that district, with exceptions for charter and magnet schools, and other special schools. Since schools differ greatly in their quality, many parents prefer living in districts with better schools. One objective measure of this preference is the difference in prices of houses of a given quality, with similar neighborhood amenities, etc. between districts with good schools and those with lower quality schools.

Families who value education and have higher incomes will bid more for houses in districts with good schools. This will bid up the prices of these houses, and thereby would reduce the advantages of living there. Nevertheless, the higher price tag in good school districts would typically not be large enough to deter families with the greatest willingness to pay for good schools from moving there.

One way to measure objectively the housing premium for good schools is to compare the prices of similar houses on both sides of the boundary separating good school districts from other districts-a technique used in various studies, including a dissertation at Chicago by Daniel Tannenbaum. He is finding significantly higher prices for housing on the boundary within the good school districts.

Given the advantage of living in districts with good schools, there is jockeying to draw district boundaries in ways that favor families with greater political clout. These tend to be wealthier and more educated families, and also persons supporting the parties in power. If the boundaries are changed to place their houses in better school districts, homeowners gain doubly: their houses rise in value, and their children attend better schools.

The advantages of living in particular congressional districts can also be determined by comparing housing prices on different sides of the boundaries between congressional districts. I doubt if people are willing to pay much to be in districts with greater numbers of Republicans or Democrats because that has little effect on their personal benefits. However, regardless of their political affiliation, they would be willing to pay through higher housing prices to be in districts that provide greater subsidies and other benefits to residents because these districts have with influential representatives. They would pay higher housing prices to be in these districts, even if they would not vote for the influential representatives.

 

Comments

[John Hall]

Why rely on a non-partisan committee when you can use K means clustering to do it? E.g.
http://www.math.washington.edu/~morrow/mcm/MCM_2007Smaller.pdf

[Jack]

Well, Mr Becker I'd agree with much of that and if you live in the Stanford area? you likely have nearby examples.

I recall in So Cal that Sepulveda Blvd separates the many beach towns from LA proper, Glendale and other less chic inland towns. On the Manhattan Beach side of the Blvd the same old somewhat remodeled post WWII bungalow being half again the house across the street where the family might be in LA schools and not have the "Manhattan" address.

But usually, and the history of So Cal and much of our nation seems to be some version of "white flight" from the namesake city to the waiting and, as you say, more costly housing of sovereign suburban towns where THEIR money (they earned in the city?) goes to THEIR schools, with the "others" "left behind".

We're "lucky" here in Anchorage where in the 70's we incorporated the city and the surrounding borough/county into one entity, and ONE school district with schools funded about as equitably from one end to the other 60 miles away. Mostly, families don't ask their realtor about "school districts" though some are favored a bit more than others, but select more from "hillside" "downtown" mid-town for their own varying preferences.

I contrast the "Anchorage" model with that of Detroit. As you may know 50's Detroit had 1.6 million population 90% "white" and today has lost half its population and is not only 80% "black" but has half the per capita income of the surrounding "greater Detroit Metro area" of 5 million people with income and demographics typical of the rest of the US.

Despite the greater Metro needing Detroit proper for its corp HQ's and all that made or is left of Detroit they let their big apple rot from the core outward. We'll see more of it as most of our older cities have the same seeds of their own (selfish) destruction.

Or so it seems in the freakishly balmy 35 degree weather of 60 degrees north latitude.