African-American economic mobility in the 1940s: A portrait from the Palmer survey

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Vanderbilt University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• 发表日期: 2000
• 页码: 756-781
• 关键词: world-war-ii; labor-markets; DISCRIMINATION

摘要

I use retrospective work histories from a unique dataset to follow workers in six cities through occupational, industrial, and geographic moves, thereby characterizing aspects of black economic mobility during the 1940s that cannot be viewed through the Census data. Relatively few migrants were drawn directly from the southern agricultural sector. Black occupational upgrades were larger than white upgrades on average but black upgrades were smaller than those of observationally similar whites. Black veterans did no better than black nonveterans in terms of upgrading or wages. And black workers in war-related industries earned substantially more than observationally similar blacks.