Why do communities with larger shares of ethnic and racial minorities have worse public goods provision? Many studies have emphasized the role of diversity in hindering public outcomes, but the question of causality remains elusive. The authors contribute to this debate by tracing the roots of both contemporary racial demography and public goods provision to the uneven historical expansion of the state. Focusing on new historical data from Brazil, the authors show that more remote municipalities with lower levels of state capacity in the past were more frequently selected by escaped slaves to serve as permanent settlements. Consequently, such municipalities have worse public services and larger shares of Afro-descendants today. These results highlight the pervasive endogeneity of the relationship between ethnic demography and public outcomes. The failure to account for context-dependent historical confounders raises concerns about the validity of previous findings regarding the social costs and benefits of any particular demographic composition.

为什么少数族裔和少数族裔比例较高的社区提供的公共产品较差？许多研究都强调了多样性在阻碍公共成果方面的作用，但因果关系的问题仍然难以捉摸。作者通过将当代种族人口统计和公共产品供应的根源追溯到国家不平衡的历史扩张，为这场辩论做出了贡献。作者着眼于巴西的新历史数据，表明过去国家能力水平较低的偏远城市更频繁地被逃亡奴隶选择作为永久定居点。因此，今天这些城市的公共服务更差，非洲人后裔的比例更大。这些结果突出了种族人口和公共成果之间关系的普遍内生性。