IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ilrrev/v48y1995i3p470-481.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Explaining Black-White Wage Convergence, 1940–1950

Author

Listed:
  • Robert A. Margo

Abstract

During the 1940s, racial differences in wages narrowed at an unusually rapid pace. Using a decomposition technique different from that of previous studies, the author shows that wage compression between and within groups—the so-called “Great Compression†—was a major factor behind racial wage convergence in the 1940s. In addition to wage compression, occupational shifts, internal migration, and diminishing racial differences in schooling helped to narrow the black-white wage gap between 1940 and 1950.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert A. Margo, 1995. "Explaining Black-White Wage Convergence, 1940–1950," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 48(3), pages 470-481, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ilrrev:v:48:y:1995:i:3:p:470-481
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ilr.sagepub.com/content/48/3/470.abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Collins, William J. & Margo, Robert A., 2001. "Race and Home Ownership: A Century-Long View," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 68-92, January.
    2. Virginia Parks, 2011. "Revisiting Shibboleths of Race and Urban Economy: Black Employment in Manufacturing and the Public Sector Compared, Chicago 1950–2000," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(1), pages 110-129, January.
    3. Jung, Yeonha, 2018. "How The Legacy of Slavery Has Survived: A Mechanism through Labor Market Institutions and Human Capital," SocArXiv snpg2, Center for Open Science.
    4. Eric D. Gould, 2021. "Torn Apart? The Impact of Manufacturing Employment Decline on Black and White Americans," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 103(4), pages 770-785, October.
    5. Ariel J. Binder & Caroline Walker & Jonathan Eggleston & Marta Murray-Close, 2022. "Race, Class, and Mobility in U.S. Marriage Markets," Working Papers 22-59, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    6. Patrick Bayer & Kerwin Kofi Charles, 2016. "Divergent Paths: Structural Change, Economic Rank, and the Evolution of Black-White Earnings Differences, 1940-2014," NBER Working Papers 22797, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Jung, Yeonha, 2018. "The Legacy of King Cotton: Agricultural Patterns and the Quality of Structural Change," SocArXiv trjfz, Center for Open Science.
    8. Duque, Valentina & Schmitz, Lauren L., 2020. "The Influence of Early-life Economic Shocks on Long-term Outcomes: Evidence from the U.S. Great Depression," Working Papers 2020-11, University of Sydney, School of Economics.
    9. Bailey, Martha J. & Collins, William J., 2006. "The Wage Gains of African-American Women in the 1940s," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 66(3), pages 737-777, September.
    10. Scotese Carol A., 2010. "War Mobilization and the Great Compression," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-29, July.
    11. William J. Collins & Marianne H. Wanamaker, 2017. "African American Intergenerational Economic Mobility Since 1880," NBER Working Papers 23395, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:ilrrev:v:48:y:1995:i:3:p:470-481. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.ilr.cornell.edu .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.