Black and White Names: Evolution and Determinants

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: National University of Singapore
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/S0022050722000389
• 发表日期: 2022
• 页码: 959-1002
• 关键词: great migration; intergenerational mobility; economic outcomes; UNITED-STATES; assimilation; AGE; selection; segregation

摘要

Black and white Americans tend to have different names today. This divide was long in the making. I show that the racial divergence in naming patterns was a gradual and continuous process spanning the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I then exploit the migration of households from the South to determine if place matters for name choices. Children born after their households moved receive names that are less black or more white than their older siblings, a difference that widens with time spent outside the South. This may reflect the cultural assimilation of households rather than a response to economic incentives.