Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T17:20:20.137Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

African-American Economic Mobility in the 1940s: A Portrait from the Palmer Survey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2012

William J. Collins
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Vanderbilt University, Box 35-B, Nashville, TN 37235. E-mail: william.collins@vanderbilt.edu.

Abstract

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.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Angrist, Joshua D., and Krueger, Alan B.. “Why Do World War II Veterans Earn More than Nonveterans?Journal of Labor Economics 12, no. 1 (1994): 7498.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banfield, Edward C.The Unheavenly City: The Nature and Future of Our Urban Crisis. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1968.Google Scholar
Blau, Francine D.Immigration and Labor Earnings in Early 20th Century America.” Research in Population Economics 2 (1980): 2141.Google Scholar
Bodnar, John, Simon, Roger, and Weber, Michael P.. Lives of Their Own. Blacks, Italians, and Poles in Pittsburgh, 1900–1960. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Borjas, George J.The Economics of Immigration.” Journal of Economic Literature 32, no. 4 (1994): 1667–717.Google Scholar
Branson, Herman.The Training of Negroes for War Industries in World War II.” Journal of Negro Education 12, no. 3 (1943): 376–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chiswick, Barry R.The Effect of Americanization on the Earnings of Foreign-Born Men.” Journal of Political Economy 86, no. 5 (1978): 897921.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, William J. “Race, Roosevelt, and Wartime Production: Fair Employment in World War II Labor Markets.” American Economic Review, forthcoming (2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, William J., and Margo, Robert A.. “Race and Home Ownership, 1900–1990.” Explorations in Economic History, forthcoming 2000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dalfiume, Richard M.Desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces. Fighting on Two Fronts, 1939–1953. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1969.Google Scholar
Donohue, John J., and Heckman, James. “Continuous versus Episodic Change: The Impact of Civil Rights Policy on the Economic Status of Blacks.” Journal of Economic Literature 29 (1991): 1603–43.Google Scholar
Goldin, Claudia.The Role of World War II in the Rise of Women's Employment.” American Economic Review 81, no. 4 (1991): 741–56.Google Scholar
Goldin, Claudia, and Margo, Robert A.. “The Great Compression: The Wage Structure in the United States at Mid-Century.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 107 (1992): 134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, E. Marvin.Black Migration in America from 1915 to 1960. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Gottlieb, Peter.Making Their Own Way: Southern Blacks' Migration to Pittsburgh, 1916–1930. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Green, William H.EconometricAnalysis. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1993.Google Scholar
Hatton, Timothy J.The Immigration Assimilation Puzzle in Late Nineteenth-Century America.” This JOURNAL 57, no. 1 (1997): 3462.Google Scholar
Heckman, James, and Payner, Brooks. “Determining the Impact of Federal Anti-Discrimination Policy on the Economic Status of Blacks: A Study of South Carolina.” American Economic Review 79, no. 1 (1989): 242–46.Google Scholar
Kain, John F., and Persky, Joseph J.. “The North's Stake in Southern Rural Poverty.” In Rural Poverty in the United States, 288310. Washington, DC: GPO, 1967.Google Scholar
Kiser, Clyde V.Sea Island to City: A Study of St. Helena Islanders in Harlem and Other Urban Centers. New York: Atheneum, 1969.Google Scholar
Maloney, Thomas N.Wage Compression and Wage Inequality Between Black and White Males in the United States, 1940–1960.” This JOURNAL 54, no. 2 (1994): 358–81.Google Scholar
Maloney, Thomas N., and Whatley, Warren C.. “Making the Effort: The Contours of Racial Discrimination in Detroit's Labor Markets, 1920–1940.” This JOURNAL 55, no. 3 (1995): 465–93.Google Scholar
Margo, Robert A.Race and Schooling in the South, 1880–1950: An Economic History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Margo, Robert A.Explaining Black-White Wage Convergence, 1940–1950.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 48, no. 3 (1995): 470–81.Google Scholar
Margo, Robert A.The Effect of Migration on Black Incomes: Evidence from the 1940 Census.” Economics Letters 31 (1989): 403–06.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Masters, Stanley H.Black-White Income Differentials. New York: Academic Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Myrdal, Gunnar.An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1944.Google Scholar
Palmer, Gladys L.Labor Mobility in Six Cities: A Report on the Survey of Patterns and Factors in Labor Mobility, 1940–1950. New York: Social Science Research Council, 1954.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reed, Merl E.Seedtimefor the Modern Civil Rights Movement: The President's Committee on Fair Employment Practice, 1941–46. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Ruchames, Louis.Race, Jobs, and Politics: The Story of the FEPC. New York: Columbia University Press, 1953.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruggles, Steven; Mathew, Sobeck et al. , Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 2.0. Minneapolis: Historical Census Projects, University of Minnesota, 1997.Google Scholar
Smith, James P.Race and Human Capital.” American Economic Review 74, no.4 (1984): 685–98.Google Scholar
Smith, James P., and Welch, Finis R.. “Black Economic Progress After Myrdal.” Journal of Economic Literature 27 (1989): 519–64.Google Scholar
Sundstrom, William A.Down or Out: Unemployment and Occupational Shifts of Urban Black Men during the Great Depression.” Research in Economic History 16 (1996): 127–55.Google Scholar
Sundstrom, William A.The Color Line: Racial Norms and Discrimination in Urban Labor Markets, 1910–1950.” This JOURNAL 54, no. 2 (1994): 382–96.Google Scholar
United States Bureau of the Census. Seventeenth Census of the United States, 1950. Various volumes. Washington, DC: GPO, 1952.Google Scholar
United States Bureau of the Census. Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940. Volume 3, Part 1. Washington, DC: GPO, 1942.Google Scholar
United States Department of Labor. “Defense and Wartime Employment.” In The Negro Handbook 1946–47, edited by Murray, Florence, 99101. New York: Current Books: 1947.Google Scholar
United States Bureau of the Census. “Negro Women War Workers.” Women's Bureau Bulletin No. 205. Washington DC: 1945.Google Scholar
Weaver, Robert C.The Employment of Negroes in War Industries.” International Labour Review 50, no. 2 (1944): 141–59.Google Scholar
Whatley, Warren C.Getting a Foot in the Door: Learning, State Dependence, and the Racial Integration of Firms.” This JOURNAL 50 no. 1 (1990): 4367.Google Scholar
Wolfbein, Seymour L. “Postwar Trends in Negro Employment.” Monthly Labor Review (12 1947): 663–65.Google Scholar