Race Neutrality by Samuel L. Myers Inhyuck Ha

Author:Samuel L. Myers,Inhyuck Ha
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780739185629
Publisher: Lexington Books, a division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Figure 6.1 Ratio of black male to white male wage and salary income, 1970–2009. Authors’ computations from IPUMS-CPS (Flood et al. 2017).

Figure 6.2 Ratio of black female to white female wage and salary income, 1970–2009. Authors’ computations from IPUMS-CPS (Flood et al. 2017).

During the period when government affirmative action policies were most keenly pursued, from the late 1960s to the late 1970s, the ratio of black-to-white earnings increased among both males and females. Earnings disparities diminished during this era. Then, as white female employment opportunities expanded in high-skilled occupations, the ratio of black-to-white earnings saw a long-term decline, dropping from a peak for black females of 1.00 in 1977 to a low of .85 for black females in 1999. The ratio rose after the 2001 recession and fell again after the 2008 recession. Thus, for females, there is the appearance of long-term declines in black-white earnings ratios, consistent with the “rising tides” hypothesis.

Among males a different picture emerges. Figure 6.3 superimposes the dates of the recessions since 1970 on the mapper of earnings gaps to capture the effects of recessions on earnings disparities. Recession years are defined as December 1969 (IV) to November 1970 (IV); November 1973 (IV) to March 1975 (I); January 1980 (I) to July 1980 (III); July 1981 (III) to November 1982 (IV); July 1990 (III) to March 1991(I); March 2001(I) to November 2001 (IV); and December 2007 (IV) to June 2009 (II). Post-recession years occur in the two quarters following the end of a recession. All other years are those that are not recession or post-recession years. The conventional wisdom is that these gaps should widen during the downturn and narrow during the recovery, but the figure shows that, in four of the past six recessions, earnings disparities narrowed among males during the downturn. This evidence is not consistent with the “rising tides” hypothesis.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.