Doctoral Dissertation: The Effectiveness of Federal Anti-Discrimination Legislation in Increasing Residential Mortgage Credit to Minority Neighborhoods

University Of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

This project is a doctoral dissertation improvement award to determine whether changes to the enforcement levels of federal anti-discrimination legislation have been effective in increasing the extension of residential mortgage credit to minority neighborhoods by retail lending institutions. In particular, amendments were implemented in 1989 to the Fair Housing Act of 1968 that substantially increased the type of cases that the Department of Justice could pursue as well as allowed for compensatory and punitive damages in these cases. This project purchases Home Mortgage Act Disclosure (HMDA) data which all retail banking institutions are required to file yearly. The data has been collected yearly since 1975 and includes information on the types of loans, number of loans and dollar amounts of lending by geographic area. Thus HMDA data is ideal for utilization in answering the question of interest. The HMDA data purchased will be housed at the University of California at Los Angels' Institute for Social Science Research (ISSR) Data Archives for potential use by other researchers and students.