Black Concentration Effects on Black-White and Gender Inequality: Multilevel Analysis for U.S. Metropolitan Areas

Abstract

This investigation into effects of metropolitan-area black population proportions on earnings inequality differs from previous studies in two principal ways: It examines black population effects on gender as well as black-white inequality; and it employs a hierarchical linear model for individual and metropolitan area data from the 1990 Census. Principal findings are that greater relative black population size is associated with (1) higher white earnings and lower black earnings for men and women, and (2) reduced gender inequality among black workers. Thus, black-white inequality is higher relative to gender inequality in labor markets with greater black representation, which has important implications for the study of interaction in stratification systems.