Continuous Versus Episodic Change: The Impact of Civil Rights Policy on the Economic Status of Blacks

Donohue, John J.; Heckman, James D.

doi:10.3386/w3894

Cited by 291 publications

(309 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

297

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…This dramatic trend break in fatalities for these two causes is important because they contributed to a high fraction of overall black infant mortahty and effective treatments for both conditions were well known and widely used. We argue that the trend break in black IMRs in the mral South 1965-1975. For the period, we estimate gains between $27.5 and $41.9 billion. These findings indicate that the benefits of the 1960s Civil Rights legislation extended beyond the labor market outcomes considered previously (Chay 1995;Chay 1998;Donohue and Heckman 1991;Heckman and Payner 1989). Consequently, we conclude that the benefits of this legislation were substantially larger than has been recognized.…”

mentioning

confidence: 56%

Civil Rights, the War on Poverty, and Black-White Convergence in Infant Mortality in the Rural South and Mississippi

2006

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

mentioning

confidence: 56%

Civil Rights, the War on Poverty, and Black-White Convergence in Infant Mortality in the Rural South and Mississippi

2006

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Donohue and Heckman (1991), however, note that the decomposition results presented in Smith and Welch (1989) are somewhat sensitive to the choice of base race. To address this concern, we also calculate decompositions using black as the base race and compare results.…”

Section: Education Migration and Other Demographic Factorsmentioning

confidence: 93%

Trends in Self-Employment Among White and Black Men: 1910-1990

Fairlie¹,

Meyer²

1999

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

. Also, many states and the federal government are currently promoting self-employment as a way to leave the welfare and unemployment insurance rolls. For descriptions of these programs see Guy, Doolittle, and Fink (1991) and Raheim (1997) for the AFDC program, and U.S. Department of Labor (1992) and Benus et al. (1995) for the UI program. IntroductionThe decline in self-employment during this century is one of the major historical trends in the U.S. labor market. The fraction of white male workers who were self-employed fell from one in six in 1910 to one in ten in 1970. It is also striking that this trend stopped and reversed itself between 1970 and 1990. The self-employment rate rose from 10.0 percent in 1970 to 11.4 percent in 1990. Given the magnitude of these changes in self-employment, surprisingly very little research has documented the changes and identified their causes. Trends in black selfemployment have been studied even less, despite much recent interest in the lack of black-owned businesses and frequent conjectures about historical levels of self-employment and their causes.We use Census microdata covering most of the twentieth century to document the trends in selfemployment among both white and black men and to explore their potential causes.An examination of long-term trends in self-employment is important for several reasons.First, it has been argued that small businesses create a disproportionate share of new jobs in the economy, are an important source of innovation, and have an important effect on political decisions in the United States.1 Second, many academicians and policy makers view selfemployment as a route out of poverty and as an alternative to unemployment or potential discrimination in the labor market. 2 Third, the institutional environment in which the selfemployed work differs in important ways from that of wage/salary workers. The self-employed are not subject to the usual labor contracts and their consequent incentives, and they either do not receive, or purchase for themselves, fringe benefits provided by employers, such as health 3 See Wolpin (1977), Lazear andMoore (1984), andRettenmaier (1996). 4 See Phillips (1962) for 1929-60, Bregger (1963) for 1948-62 and updates by Ray (1975), Fain (1980 and Becker (1984), ) for 1948-82, and Aronson (1991) for 1955 The clearest statement comes from Phillips (1962, p. 1) who reports that "...the proportion of self-employed persons in the American labor force has been declining for many decades. This trend will no doubt persist in the future."6 See Bates (1987, 1989), Borjas and Bronars (1989), Meyer (1990), Fairlie (1996Fairlie ( , 1999, and Fairlie and Meyer (1996). 2 insurance and pensions. Past research has argued that the self-employed have a different return to education, will have a different age-earnings profile, and have more variability in hours worked than wage/salary workers.3 Finally, the self-employed are often singled out in the formation of public policy. They are treated differently in various aspects of the tax cod...

show abstract

“…Smith and Welch (1977, 1984, finding that the replacement of older cohorts by newer cohorts was driving the improvement in relative wages among blacks, concluded that skill convergence, rather than antidiscrimination policies, were responsible for black economic advancement. Brown (1982), Leonard (1990), Heckman (1989), and Heckman and Payner (1989), showing that in periods of intense government intervention all cohorts advanced, concluded that government policies (e.g., the 1964 Civil Rights Act) played a significant role in the convergence of black and white male wages (see Donohue and Heckman (1991) for a summary of this debate).…”

Section: Identifying the Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Improving Relative Status of Black Men

Couch

Daly

2004

SSRN Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Using data from the Current Population Survey, we examine recent trends in the relative economic status of black men. Our findings point to gains in the relative wages of black men (compared to whites) during the 1990s, especially among younger workers. In 1989, the average black male worker (experienced or not) earned about 69 percent as much per week as the average white male worker. In 2001, the average younger black worker was earning about 86as much as an equally experienced white male; black males at all experience levels earned 72 percent as much as the average white in 2001. Greater occupational diversity and a reduction in unobserved skill differences and/or labor market discrimination explain much of the trend. For both younger and older workers, general wage inequality tempered the rate of wage convergence between blacks and whites during the 1990s, although the effects were less pronounced than during the 1980s.

show abstract

Continuous Versus Episodic Change: The Impact of Civil Rights Policy on the Economic Status of Blacks

Cited by 291 publications

References 0 publications

Civil Rights, the War on Poverty, and Black-White Convergence in Infant Mortality in the Rural South and Mississippi

Civil Rights, the War on Poverty, and Black-White Convergence in Infant Mortality in the Rural South and Mississippi

Trends in Self-Employment Among White and Black Men: 1910-1990

The Improving Relative Status of Black Men

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About