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The Geography of Wage Discrimination in the Pre–Civil Rights South

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 May 2007

William A. Sundstrom
William A. Sundstrom
Affiliation:
Professor and Chair, Department of Economics, Santa Clara University, 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA 95053-0385. E-mail: wsundstrom@scu.edu.
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Abstract

Prior to the modern civil rights movement of the 1960s, the pay gap between African-American and white workers in the South was large overall, but also quite variable across location. Using 1940 census data, I estimate the white-black earnings gap of men for separate county groups called state economic areas, adjusting for individual differences in schooling and experience. I show that the gap was significantly greater in areas where, ceteris paribus, blacks were a larger proportion of the workforce, plantation institutions were more prevalent, more of the population was urban, and white voters exhibited segregationist preferences.

Type
ARTICLES
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 67 , Issue 2 , June 2007 , pp. 410 - 444
Copyright
© 2007 The Economic History Association

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