Closing the Gap: Forty Years of Economic Progress for Blacks.

Abstract

Forty years ago Gunnar Myrdal assessed the economic situation of blacks in America as pathological. The 40-year record clearly points to a significant and quantitatively large improvement in the relative economic status of black men. In 1940 the typical black male earned around $4500 (in 1984 dollars); a similarly employed black male earned almost $19000 by 1980. The typical black male worker in 1940 earned only 43% as much as his white counterpart; by 1980 the figure was 73%. Whether distinguishing between low or middle-income blacks between the old and the young or the more or less educated the incomes of black men have risen relative to comparable whites. The data show simultaneously the persistence of black poverty the growth of the black middle class and the emergence of a nonnegligible black upper class. The growth in size of the black middle class is so spectacular that as a group it outnumbers the black poor. The 2 dimensions of education that closed the racial wage gap are the narrowing of educational disparities between the races and the improving economic return to black schooling. Southern black migration to Northern cities increased black-white male wage ratios by 11-19% between 1940 and 1980 but the income gains from migration were largely exhausted by 1970. After 1970 the wages of both black and white men increased faster in the South than in the rest of the country. The introduction of the mechanical cotton picker caused a sharp decline in the demand for a largely Southern black labor force in cotton and gave additional impetus to the migration of young Southern blacks to the North. The increasing tendency of many middle-aged black men to drop out of the labor force is an important and neglected social problem. Affirmative action resulted in a radical reshuffling of black jobs in the labor force. Unfortunately its ability to raise the incomes of black men has proven to be far more difficult to achieve.