HOW MUCH DOES SORTING INCREASE INEQUALITY

Some commentators argue that increased sorting into internally homogen eous neighborhoods, schools, and marriages is radically polarizing soc iety. Calibration of a formal model, however, suggests that the steady -state standard deviation of education would increase only 1.7 percent if the correlation between neighbors' education doubled, and would fa ll only 1.6 percent if educational sorting by neighborhood disappeared . The steady-state standard deviation of education would grow 1 percen t if the correlation between spouses' education increased from 0.6 to 0.8. In fact, marital and neighborhood sorting have been stable, or ev en decreasing historically. Sorting has somewhat more significant effe cts on intergenerational mobility than on inequality.