The North-South Earnings Gap: Changes During the 1960s and 1970s

Abstract

Regional inequality within modern nation states has been a persistent feature of advanced capitalist economies, although the long-run expectation is one of convergence. We test the convergence hypothesis by examining the trend in the earnings gap between workers living in the South and North (the non-South) of the United States from 1960 to 1976. The results show some convergence for advantaged workers, blue collar workers, and workers with lower educational attainment. Most of the earnings gap between workers in the North and South cannot be explained by differences in the industrial, occupational, or educational composition of the work force.