Entrepreneurship and Labor Absorption: Blacks and Whites in Northern U.S. Cities During the Great Depression

2021 ◽  
pp. 003464462110605
Author(s):  
Robert L. Boyd
Keyword(s):  
Great Depression ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Black Business ◽  
The United States ◽  
Absorption Capacity ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Blacks And Whites ◽  
Social Scientific

An extensive literature on newly developing societies shows that the urban economy's entrepreneurial sector can absorb a sizable share of persons who are unemployed and searching for work. Surprisingly, however, little research on the United States has examined entrepreneurship's labor absorption capacity. The present study fills this gap by analyzing Blacks and Whites in northern U.S. cities during the Great Depression, a time of widespread joblessness, particularly among Blacks. The results suggest that, if not for Blacks’ uniquely severe resource deprivation, Black entrepreneurship could have absorbed a large number of jobless Blacks. Labor absorption estimates, calculated with 1940 Census data, indicate that one-third of the Black-White unemployment difference is attributable to racial inequality of entrepreneurial outcomes. This historical evidence advances social-scientific understanding of racial inequality during the Great Depression and informs a longstanding debate about the merits of promoting Black business ownership as a strategy for improving Blacks’ labor market prospects.

General-Equilibrium Models in Economic History

1971 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Temin
Keyword(s):  
Great Depression ◽  
Economic History ◽  
The United States ◽  
General Interest ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Secondary Material ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
History Of ◽  
Central Characteristic

In this paper, I will discuss three classic problems in economic history. I label them “classic” because they are problems of general interest that share the central characteristic of classic problems: an extensive literature has not led to general agreement. They are taken from the literature on the history of the United States because of the wealth of data and secondary material on this country's history, but they all have their analogues or reflections in European history. They are the problems of labor scarcity in America, the depression of the 1930's (which Americans call the Great Depression), and the deflation of the late nineteenth century (which the British call the Great Depression).

The Myth of the Latin American Race Monolith: Notes for Future Comparative Research on Racial Inequality in the Americas

2021 ◽  
pp. 003464462199600
Author(s):  
Diego Ayala-McCormick
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Comparative Research ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Census Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
Unemployment Rates ◽  
Racial Ideologies ◽  
Racial Lines

It has become common to compare racial inequality in the United States with a “Latin American” pattern of racial inequality in which egalitarian racial ideologies mask stark socioeconomic inequalities along racial lines. However, relatively few comparative studies exist attempting to analyze variations in degrees of racial inequality in the Americas. To stimulate further research in this area, the following study analyzes census data on racial inequality in unemployment rates, educational attainment, homeownership rates, and income in Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the United States. The results suggest that while Brazil is similar to the United States in displaying large levels of racial inequality in the areas measured, Cuba and Puerto Rico display significantly lower levels of racial inequality and Colombia falls in between, undermining conceptions of a monolithic Latin American racial system.

scholarly journals Color Crit: Critical Race Theory and the History and Future of Colorism in the United States

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert L. Reece
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Skin Tone ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Race Theory ◽  
American Society

Critical race theory teaches that racism and racial inequality are constants in American society that stand outside of the prejudices of individuals. It argues that structures and institutions are primarily responsible for the maintenance of racial inequality. However, critical race theorists have neglected to formally examine and theorize colorism, a primary offshoot of racial domination. Although studies of colorism have become increasingly common, they lack a unifying theoretical framework, opting to lean on ideas about prejudice and preference to explain the advantages lighter skinned, Black Americans are afforded relative to darker skinned Black Americans. In this study, I deploy a critical race framework to push back against preference as the only, or primary, mechanism facilitating skin tone stratification. Instead, I use historical Census data and regression analysis to explore the historical role of color-based marriage selection on concentrating economic advantage among lighter skinned Black Americans. I then discuss the policy and legal implications of developing a structural view of colorism and skin tone stratification in the United States and the broader implications for how we conceptualize race in this country.

War and the Next Lesson

Money ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kenneth Galbraith ◽  
James K. Galbraith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Monetary Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Fiscal Policy ◽  
World War I ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
John Maynard Keynes ◽  
The Great Depression

This chapter examines the lessons of World War II with respect to money and monetary policy. World War I exposed the fragility of the monetary structure that had gold as its foundation, the great boom of the 1920s showed how futile monetary policy was as an instrument of restraint, and the Great Depression highlighted the ineffectuality of monetary policy for rescuing the country from a slump—for breaking out of the underemployment equilibrium once this had been fully and firmly established. On the part of John Maynard Keynes, the lesson was that only fiscal policy ensured not just that money was available to be borrowed but that it would be borrowed and would be spent. The chapter considers the experiences of Britain, Germany, and the United States with a lesson of World War II: that general measures for restraining demand do not prevent inflation in an economy that is operating at or near capacity.

Our Daily Bread: ‘Cooperation’, ‘Independence’ and Politics in Mid-1930s Cinema

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Neve
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Box Office ◽  
Production History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cooperative Activity ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter revisits and explores the production history of director King Vidor’s independently made movie, Our Daily Bread (1934), its ideological and aesthetic motifs, and its exhibition and reception in the United States and beyond, not least its apparent failure at the box office. It further considers the relationship between the film and contemporary advocacy of cooperative activity as a response to the Great Depression, notably by the California Cooperative League, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, and Upton Sinclair’s End Poverty in California campaign for the state governorship. It also assesses the movie in relation to Vidor’s own cooperative vision through its emphasis on individuals and community as a solution to the Great Depression and the significant absence of the state in this agency.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alanís Enciso Fernando Saúl ◽  
Russ Davidson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
The Great Depression

The introduction provides the reader with an historical overview of the Cardenas administration’s attempts to orchestrate an organized repatriation of its citizens from the United States during the years of the Great Depression. The introduction also endeavours to describe how Alanis Enciso’s overview of Mexican repatriation under the Cardenas administration differs from similar analyses, and how each of these works has influenced but ultimately differs from Enciso’s own book.

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