How I met your mother: The effect of school desegregation on birth outcomes

This paper assesses the effects of court-ordered school desegregation on biracial births, a measure of racial integration. Using birth certificate data, I present a multiple difference-in-differences approach that exploits variation in the timing of school desegregation in different counties. Among black mothers in non-Southern counties, I find that school desegregation increases biracial births. The results are robust to county fixed effects, cohort fixed effects, and county-specific cohort trends. This paper contributes to the literature on the determinants of interracial relationships and the importance of school desegregation on demographic outcomes.