Community Composition and Collective Action: Analyzing Initial Mail Response to the 2000 Census
- 1 February 2004
- journal article
- Published by MIT Press in The Review of Economics and Statistics
- Vol. 86 (1), 303-312
- https://doi.org/10.1162/003465304323023822
Abstract
This paper analyzes how community heterogeneity influences resident decisions to undertake actions generating public benefits. The decision in question is completing and returning the 2000 Census questionnaire, an action which secures a significant amount of federal grants for the community. The model developed to explain this action allows members of societal groups to differentially value public benefits that accrue to other group members. Racial, generational, and socioeconomic class heterogeneity all predict significantly lower response rates at the county level. The potential for endogenous sorting into heterogeneous counties implies that the magnitude of true behavioral effects exceeds these estimates. © 2004 President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Keywords
This publication has 11 references indexed in Scilit:
- Who trusts others?Journal of Public Economics, 2002
- Interpreting ethnic fragmentation effectsEconomics Letters, 2002
- Group Loyalty and the Taste for RedistributionJournal of Political Economy, 2001
- Participation in Heterogeneous Communities*The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2000
- Public Goods and Ethnic DivisionsThe Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1999
- Incentives and Social Capital: Are Homeowners Better Citizens?Journal of Urban Economics, 1999
- Africa's Growth Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic DivisionsThe Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1997
- Demographic structure and the political economy of public educationJournal of Policy Analysis and Management, 1997
- Corruption and GrowthThe Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1995
- Diagnostics for heteroscedasticity in regressionBiometrika, 1983