Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-nwzlb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T15:17:22.471Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Obama, Katrina, and the Persistence of Racial Inequality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 May 2016

Robert A. Margo*
Affiliation:
Robert A. Margo is Professor of Economics, Boston University, 270 Bay State Road, Boston, MA 02215 and Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138. E-mail: margora@bu.edu.

Abstract

New benchmark estimates of Black-White income ratios for 1870, 1900, and 1940 are combined with standard post-World War census data. The resulting time series reveals that the pace of racial income convergence has generally been steady but slow, quickening only during the 1940s and the modern Civil Rights era. I explore the interpretation of the time series with a model of intergenerational transmission of inequality in which racial differences in causal factors that determine income are very large just after the Civil War and which erode slowly across subsequent generations.

“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.”

—W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

This is my presidential address to the Economic History Association. I am grateful to Martha Bailey, Richard Baker, Pat Bayer, Leah Boustan, Ann Carlos, William Collins, Peter Doeringer, Randy Ellis, Stanley Engerman, Claudia Goldin, Kevin Lang, Paul Rhode, Gary Solon, Marianne Wanamaker, and seminar participants at Boston University, Middlebury College, and the University of California at Los Angeles for helpful comments, and to Ying Liu for outstanding research assistance.

References

REFERENCES

Aaronson, Daniel, and Mazumder, Bhashkar. “Intergenerational Economic Mobility in the US: 1940 to 2000.Journal of Human Resources 43, no. 1 2008: 139–72.Google Scholar
Aaronson, Daniel, and Mazumder, Bhashkar. “The Impact of Rosenwald Schools on Black Achievement.Journal of Political Economy 119, no. 5 2011: 821–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abramitzky, Ran, Boustan, Leah P., and Eriksson, Katherine. “Europe's Tired, Poor, Huddled Masses: Self-Selection and Economic Outcomes in the Age of Mass Migration.NBER Working Paper No. 15684, Cambridge, MA, 2010.Google Scholar
Arrow, Kenneth. “The Theory of Discrimination.” In Discrimination in Labor Markets, edited by Albert Rees and Orley Ashenfelter, 3–33. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973.Google Scholar
Ashenfelter, Orley, Collins, William J., and Yoon, Albert. “Evaluating the Role of Brown v. Board of Education in School Equalization, Desegregation, and the Income of African-Americans.American Law and Economics Review 8, no. 2 2006: 213–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Austen-Smith, David, and Fryer, Roland. “An Economic Analysis of ‘Acting White’.The Quarterly Journal of Economics 120, no. 2 2005: 551–83.Google Scholar
Baker, Richard. “From the Field to the Classroom: The Boll Weevil's Impact on Education in Rural Georgia.Journal of Economic History 75, no. 4 2015: 1128–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bailey, Martha J., and William J., Collins. “The Wage Gains of African-American Women in the 1940s.Journal of Economic History 66, no. 3 2006: 737–77.Google Scholar
Bayer, Patrick, and Charles, Kerwin. “The Illusion of Change: Examining Racial Earnings Inequality through the Lens of Overall Inequality, 1940–2013.Working Paper, Department of Economics, Duke University, Durham, NC, 2015.Google Scholar
Becker, Gary. The Economics of Discrimination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957.Google Scholar
Becker, Gary, and Tomes, Nigel. “An Equilibrium Theory of the Distribution of Income and Intergenerational MobilityJournal of Political Economy 87, no. 6 1979: 1153–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bhattacharya, Debopam, and Mazumder, Bhashkar. “A Nonparametric Analysis of Black-White Differences in Intergenerational Income Mobility in the United States.Quantitative Economics 2, no. 2 2011: 335–79.Google Scholar
Black, Sandra E., and Paul J., Devereux. “Recent Developments in Intergenerational Mobility.” In Handbook of Labor Economics Volume 4 Part B, edited by Ashenfelter, Orley and Card, David, 1487–541. New York: Elsevier, 2011.Google Scholar
Bleakley, Hoyt. “Disease and Development: Evidence from Hookworm Eradication in the American South.Quarterly Journal of Economics 122, no. 1 2007: 73117.Google Scholar
Bodenhorn, Howard. The Color Factor: The Economics of African-American Well-Being in the Nineteenth Century South. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borjas, George J., Grogger, Jeffrey, and Gordon H., Hanson. “Immigration and the Economic Status of African-American Men.Economica 77, no. 306 2010: 255–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bound, John, and B. Freeman, Richard. “What Went Wrong? The Erosion of Relative Employment and Earnings among Young Black Men in the 1980s.Quarterly Journal of Economics 107, no. 1 1992: 201–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boustan, Leah P. Competition in the Promised Land: Black Migrants in Northern Cities and Labor Markets. Unpublished Manuscript, Department of Economics, UCLA, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boustan, Leah P., and William J., Collins. “The Origins and Persistence of Black-White Differences in Women's Labor Force Participation.” In Human Capital in History: The American Record, edited by Boustan, Leah P., Frydman, Carola, and Robert A., Margo, 205–40. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Boustan, Leah P., and Robert A., Margo. “Race, Segregation, and Postal Employment: New Evidence on Spatial Mismatch.Journal of Urban Economics 65, no. 1 2009: 110.Google Scholar
Boustan, Leah P., and Robert A., Margo. “Racial Differences in Health in Long-Run Perspective: Brief Introduction.” In Oxford Handbook of Economics and Human Biology, edited by Komlos, John. and Kelley, Inas R.. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Accessed at http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199389292.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199389292-e-6.Google Scholar
Bowles, Samuel, Loury, Glenn C., and Sethi, Rajiv. “Group Inequality.Journal of the European Economic Association 12, no. 1 2014: 129–52.Google Scholar
Cameron, Stephen V., and James J., Heckman. “The Dynamics of Educational Attainment for Blacks, Hispanics, and White Males.Journal of Political Economy 109, no. 3 2001: 455–99.Google Scholar
Carruthers, Celeste K., and Marianne H., Wanamaker. “Separate and Unequal in the Labor Market: Human Capital and the Jim Crow Wage Gap.NBER Working Paper No. 21947, Cambridge, MA, 2016.Google Scholar
Chay, Kenneth Y., Guryan, John, and Mazumder, Bhashkar. “Birth Cohort and the Black-White Achievement Gap: The Role of Access and Health Soon After Birth.NBER Working Paper No. 15078, Cambridge, MA, 2009.Google Scholar
Chay, Kenneth Y., and Munshi, Kaivan. “Black Networks after Emancipation: Evidence from Reconstruction and the Great Migration.Working Paper, Department of Economics, Brown University, Providence, RI, 2015.Google Scholar
Clark, Gregory. The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Collins, William J.When the Tide Turned: Immigration and the Delay of the Great Black Migration.Journal of Economic History 57, no. 3 1997: 607–32.Google Scholar
Collins, William J.Race, Roosevelt, and Wartime Production: Fair Employment in World War II Labor Markets.American Economic Review 91, no. 1 2001: 272–86.Google Scholar
Collins, William J., and Robert A., Margo. “Residential Segregation and Socioeconomic Outcomes: When did Ghettos Go Bad?Economics Letters 69, no. 2 2000: 239–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, William J., and Robert A., Margo. “Race and Homeownership: A Century's View.Explorations in Economic History 38, no. 1 2001: 68–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, William J., and Robert A., Margo. “Race and the Value of Owner-Occupied Housing, 1940–1990.Regional Science and Urban Economics 33, no. 3 2003: 255286.Google Scholar
Collins, William J., and Robert A., Margo. “The Labor Market Effects of the 1960s Riots.” In Brookings-Wharton Papers on Urban Affairs 2004, edited by Gale, William and Pack, Janet, 134. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Collins, William J., and Robert A., Margo. “Historical Perspectives on Racial Differences in Schooling in the United States.” In Handbook on the Economics of Education, Volume 1, edited by Hanushek, Eric and Welch, Finis, 107–54. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 2006.Google Scholar
Collins, William J., and Robert A., Margo. “The Economic Aftermath of the 1960s Riots: Evidence from Property Values.Journal of Economic History 67, no. 4 2007: 849–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, William J., and Robert A., Margo. “Race and Home Ownership from the End of the Civil War to the Present.American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings, 2011 101, no. 3 2011: 355–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, William J., and Marianne H., Wanamaker. “Selection and Economic Gains in the Great Migration of African-Americans: New Evidence from Linked Census Data.American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 6, no. 1 2014: 220–52.Google Scholar
Collins, William J., and Marianne H., Wanamaker. “Intergenerational Mobility since Emancipation.Working Paper, Department of Economics, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, 2015a.Google Scholar
Collins, William J., and Marianne H., Wanamaker. “The Great Migration in Black and White: New Evidence on Selection and Sorting of Southern Migrants.Journal of Economic History 75, no. 4 (2015b): 947–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cook, Lisa D., Logan, Trevon D., and Parman, John. “Distinctively Black Names in the American Past.Explorations in Economic History 53, no. 3 2014: 64–82.Google Scholar
Cook, Lisa D., Logan, Trevon D., and Parman, John. “The Mortality Consequences of Distinctly Black Names.Explorations in Economic History 59, no. 1 2016: 114–25.Google Scholar
Cutler, David M., and Edward L., Glaeser. “Are Ghettos Good or Bad?Quarterly Journal of Economics 112, no. 3 1997: 827–73.Google Scholar
Cutler, David M., Glaeser, Edward L., and L. Vigdor, Jacob. “The Rise and Decline of the American Ghetto.Journal of Political Economy 107, no. 3 1999: 455–506.Google Scholar
David, Paul, and Temin, Peter. “Slavery: The Progressive Institution?Journal of Economic History 34, no. 3 1974: 739–83.Google Scholar
Davis, Jonathan M. V., and Mazumder, Bhashkar. “Parental Income and Children's Well-being: An Analysis of the Survey of Income and Program Participation Matched to Social Security Administration Earnings Data.Economic Inquiry 51, no. 3 2013: 1795–808.Google Scholar
DeCanio, Stephen. “Accumulation and Discrimination in the Postbellum South.Explorations in Economic History 16, no. 2 1979: 182–206.Google Scholar
Donohue, John J., and James J., Heckman. “Continuous Versus Episodic Change: The Impact of Civil Rights Policy on the Economic Status of Blacks.Journal of Economic Literature 29, no. 4 1991: 1603–43.Google Scholar
Easterlin, Richard. “Interregional Differences in Per Capita Income, Population, and Total Income, 1880–1950.” In Trends in the American Economy in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Conference on Research on Income and Wealth, 73140. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960.Google Scholar
Engerman, Stanley L.The Economic Impact of the Civil War.Explorations in Entrepreneurial History 2nd Series 3, no. 3 1966: 176–99.Google Scholar
Ferrie, Joseph P., and Long, Jason. “Intergenerational Occupational Mobility in Britain and the U.S. since 1850.American Economic Review 103, no. 4 2013: 1109–37.Google Scholar
Fogel, Robert William, and Stanley L., Engerman. Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1974.Google Scholar
Fryer, Roland. “Guess Who's Been Coming to Dinner? Trends in Interracial Marriage over the 20th Century.Journal of Economic Perspectives 21, no. 2 2007: 71–90.Google Scholar
Fryer, Roland. “Racial Inequality in the 21st Century: The Declining Significance of Discrimination.” In Handbook of Labor Economics Volume 4 Part B, edited by Ashenfelter, Orley and Card, David, 855971. New York: Elsevier, 2011.Google Scholar
Fryer, Roland, and Levitt, Steve. “Understanding the Black-White Test Score Gap in the First Two Years of School.The Review of Economics and Statistics 86, no. 2 (2004a): 447–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fryer, Roland, and Levitt, Steve. “The Causes and Consequences of Distinctively Black Names.Quarterly Journal of Economics 119, no. 3 (2004b): 767805.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fryer, Roland, and Levitt, Steve. “The Black-White Test Score Gap through Third Grade.American Law and Economic Review 8, no. 2 2006: 249–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fryer, Roland, and Torelli, P.. “An Empirical Analysis of ‘Acting White.’Journal of Public Economics 94, nos. 5–6 2010: 380–96.Google Scholar
Fryer, Roland, Kahn, Lisa, Levitt, Steve, et al. “The Plight of Mixed Race Kids.The Review of Economics and Statistics 94, no. 3 2012: 621–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldin, Claudia. “Female Labor Force Participation: The Origins of Black-White Differences, 1870 and 1880.Journal of Economic History 37, no. 1 1977: 87108.Google Scholar
Goldin, Claudia. “’N’ Kinds of Freedom: An Introduction to the Issues.Explorations in Economic History 16, no. 1 1979: 830.Google Scholar
Goldin, Claudia, and A. Margo, Robert. “The Great Compression: The Wage Structure in the United States at Mid-Century.Quarterly Journal of Economics 107, no. 1 1992: 134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldin, Claudia, and F. Katz, Lawrence. The Race between Education and Technology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Hertz, Tom. “A Group-Specific Measure of Intergenerational Persistence.” Working Paper No. 2007-16, Department of Economics, American University, Washington, DC, 2007.Google Scholar
Higgs, Robert. Competition and Coercion: Blacks in the American Economy, 1865–1914. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Higgs, Robert. “Accumulation of Property by Southern Blacks before World War I.American Economic Review 72, no. 4 1982: 725–37.Google Scholar
Higgs, Robert. “Black Progress and the Persistence of Racial Economic Inequalities, 1865–1940.” In The Question of Discrimination: Racial Inequality in the U.S. Labor Market, edited by Shulman, Steven and Darity, William, Jr., 931. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Jefferson, Margo. Negroland: A Memoir. New York: Pantheon Books, 2015.Google Scholar
Juhn, Chinhui, Murphy, Kevin M., and Pierce, Brooks. “Accounting for the Slowdown in Black-White Wage Convergence.” In Workers and Their Wages: Changing Patterns in the United States, edited by Koster, Marvin H., 107–43. Washington, DC: AEI Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Kain F., JohnHousing Segregation, Negro Employment, and Metropolitan Decentralization.Quarterly Journal of Economics 82, no. 2 1968: 175–97.Google Scholar
Kendrick, John W. Productivity Trends in the United States. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961.Google Scholar
Kousser, Morgan. The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974.Google Scholar
Lindert, Peter H., and Jeffrey G., Williamson. Unequal Gains: American Growth and Inequality Since 1700. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016.Google Scholar
Logan, Trevon. “Health, Human Capital, and African-American Migration before 1910.Explorations in Economic History 46, no. 2 2009: 169–85.Google Scholar
Loury, Glenn. “A Dynamic Theory of Racial Income Differences.” In Women, Minorities, and Employment Discrimination, edited by Wallace, Phyllis A. and LaMond, Annette, 153–86. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1977.Google Scholar
Loury, Glenn. “Intergenerational Transfers and the Distribution of Earnings.Econometrica 49, no. 4 1981: 843–67.Google Scholar
Loury, Glenn. The Anatomy of Racial Inequality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Maloney, Thomas N.Wage Compression and Wage Inequality between Black and White Males in the United States, 1940–1960.Journal of Economic History 54, no. 2 1994: 358–81.Google Scholar
Margo, Robert A.Accumulation of Property by Southern Blacks before World War One: Comment and Further Evidence.American Economic Review 74, no. 4 1984: 768–76.Google Scholar
Margo, Robert A.Race, Educational Attainment, and the 1940 Census.Journal of Economic History 46, no. 1 (1986a): 189–98.Google Scholar
Margo, Robert A.Race and Human Capital: Comment.American Economic Review 76, no. 5 (1986b): 1221–24.Google Scholar
Margo, Robert A. Race and Schooling in the South, 1880–1950: An Economic History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Margo, Robert A.Explaining Black-White Wage Convergence, 1940–1950.Industrial and Labor Relations Review 48, no. 3 1995: 470–81.Google Scholar
Margo, Robert A. Wages and Labor Markets in the United States, 1820–1860. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Margo, Robert A.The North-South Wage Gap, Before and After the Civil War.” In Slavery in the Development of the Americas edited by David Eltis, Frank Lewis, and Kenneth Sokoloff, 324–51. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Mazumder, Bhashkar. “Fortunate Sons: New Estimates of Intergenerational Mobility in the U.S. Using Social Security Earnings Data.The Review of Economics and Statistics 87, no. 2 2005: 235–55.Google Scholar
Mazumder, Bhashkar. “Black-White Differences in Intergenerational Economic Mobility in the US.Economic Perspectives 38, First Quarter 2014: 118.Google Scholar
Mill, Roy, and Stein, L. C.. “Race, Skin Color, and Economic Outcomes in Early Twentieth-Century America.Working Paper, Department of Economics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 2012.Google Scholar
Neal, Derek A.Why Has Black-White Skill Convergence Stopped?” In Handbook of the Economics of Education, Volume 1, edited by Hanushek, Eric and Welch, Finis, 512–76. New York: Elsevier, 2006.Google Scholar
Neal, Derek A., and William R., Johnson. “The Role of Pre-Market Factors in Black-White Wage Differences.Journal of Political Economy 104, no. 5 1996: 869–95.Google Scholar
Neal, Derick, and Rick, Ermin. “The Prison Boom and the Lack of Black Progress after Smith and Welch.NBER Working Paper No. 20283, Cambridge, MA, 2014.Google Scholar
Nix, Emily, and Qian, Nancy. “The Fluidity of Race: ‘Passing’ in the United States, 1880–1940.NBER Working Paper No. 20828, Cambridge, MA, 2015.Google Scholar
Nybom, Martin, and Stuhler, Jan. “Interpreting Trends in Intergenerational Mobility.Working Paper, Department of Economics, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden, 2014.Google Scholar
Olivetti, Claudia, and Paserman, Daniele. “In the Name of the Son (and the Daughter): Marriage and Intergenerational Mobility in the United States, 1840–1950.American Economic Review 105, no. 8 2015: 2695–724.Google Scholar
Ransom, Roger, and Sutch, Richard. “Growth and Welfare in the American South of the Nineteenth Century.Explorations in Economic History 16, no. 2 1979: 207–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sacerdote, Bruce. “Slavery and the Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital.The Review of Economics and Statistics 87, no. 2 2005: 217–34.Google Scholar
Shlomowitz, Ralph. “New and Old Views on the Rural Economy of the Postbellum South: A Review Article.Australian Economic History Review 23, no. 2 1983: 258–75.Google Scholar
Sjaastad, Larry A.The Costs and Returns of Human Migration.Journal of Political Economy 70, no. 5, part 2 1962: 8093.Google Scholar
Smith, James P.Race and Human Capital.American Economic Review 74, no. 4 1984: 685–98.Google Scholar
Smith, James P., and Welch, Finis. “Black Economic Progress after Myrdal.Journal of Economic Literature 27, no. 2 1989: 519–64.Google Scholar
Solon, Gary. “Intergenerational Income Mobility in the United States.American Economic Review 82, no. 4 1992: 393408.Google Scholar
Solon, Gary. “Theoretical Models of Inequality Transmission across Multiple Generations.Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 39 (March 2014): 1318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Solon, Gary. “What Do We Know So Far About Multi-Generational Mobility?NBER Working Paper No. 21053, Cambridge, MA, 2015.Google Scholar
Steckel, Richard. “A Peculiar Population: The Nutrition, Health, and Mortality of Slaves from Childhood to Maturity.Journal of Economic History 46, no. 3 1986: 721–41.Google Scholar
Stuhler, Jan. “Mobility across Multiple Generations: the Iterated Regression Fallacy.Working Paper, Department of Economics, University College London, London, UK, 2014.Google Scholar
United States Bureau of the Census. Negroes in the United States. Washington, DC: GPO, 1904. United States Census Bureau. Detailed Tables on Wealth and Asset Ownership. Accessed http://www.census.gov/people/wealth/data/dtables.html.Google Scholar
United States Bureau of the Census. Historical Income Tables: People. Accessed at http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/people/.Google Scholar
United States Bureau of the Census. Wealth and Asset Ownership: Publications. Accessed at http://www.census.gov/people/wealth/publications/.Google Scholar
United States Department of Commerce. Bicentennial Edition: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Part 1. Washington, DC: USGPO, 1975.Google Scholar
Vedder, Richard K.The Slave Exploitation (Expropriation) Rate.Explorations in Economic History 12, no. 4 1975: 453–57.Google Scholar
Valelly, Richard M. The Two Reconstructions: The Struggle for Black Enfranchisement. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Woodward, C. Vann. The Strange Career of Jim Crow. New York: Oxford University Press, 1955.Google Scholar
Whatley, Warren. “’Getting a Foot in the Door’: Learning, State Dependence, and the Racial Integration of Firms.Journal of Economic History 50, no. 1 1990: 4366.Google Scholar
White, T. Kirk. “Initial Conditions at Emancipation: The Long-Run Effect on Black-White Wealth and Earnings Inequality.Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control 31, no. 10 2007: 3370–95.Google Scholar
Wright, Gavin. Old South, New South: Revolutions in the Southern Economy Since the Civil War. New York: Basic Books, 1986.Google Scholar
Wright, Gavin. Sharing the Prize: The Economics of the Civil Rights Revolution in the American South. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.Google Scholar