In the 1960's, Blacks and Whites chose relatively similar first names for their children. Over a short period of time in the early 1970's, that pattern changed dramatically with most Blacks (particularly those living in racially isolated neighborhoods) adopting increasingly distinctive names, but a subset of Blacks actually moving toward more assimilating names. The patterns in the data appear most consistent with a model in which the rise of the Black Power movement influenced how Blacks perceived their identities. Among Blacks born in the last two decades, names provide a strong signal of socio-economic status, which was not previously the case. We find, however, no negative causal impact of having a distinctively Black name on life outcomes. Although that result is seemingly in conflict with previous audit studies involving resumes, we argue that the two sets of findings can be reconciled.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
9938.
Length: Date of creation: Sep 2003 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9938
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Find related papers by JEL classification: J0 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General J7 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination
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