IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/32370.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Evolution of Black-White Differences in Occupational Mobility Across Post-Civil War America

Author

Listed:
  • Steven N. Durlauf
  • Gueyon Kim
  • Dohyeon Lee
  • Xi Song

Abstract

This paper studies long-run differences in intergenerational occupational mobility between Black and White Americans. Combining data from linked historical censuses and contemporary large-scale surveys, we provide a comprehensive set of mobility measures based on Markov chains that trace the short- and long-run dynamics of occupational differences. Our findings highlight the unique importance of changes in mobility experienced by the 1940–1950 birth cohort in shaping the current occupational distribution and reducing the racial occupational gap. We further explore the properties of continuing occupational inequalities and argue that these disparities are better understood by a lack of exchange mobility rather than structural mobility. Thus, contemporary occupational disparities cannot be expected to disappear based on the occupational dynamics seen historically.

Suggested Citation

  • Steven N. Durlauf & Gueyon Kim & Dohyeon Lee & Xi Song, 2024. "The Evolution of Black-White Differences in Occupational Mobility Across Post-Civil War America," NBER Working Papers 32370, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32370
    Note: EFG
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w32370.pdf
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J62 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Job, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion
    • N31 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - U.S.; Canada: Pre-1913
    • N32 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-

    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:nbr:nberwo:32370. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.