scholarly journals Competition in the Promised Land: Black Migration and Racial Wage Convergence in the North, 1940–1970

2009 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 755-782 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah Platt Boustan
Keyword(s):  
Wage Growth ◽  
Elasticity Of Substitution ◽  
The South ◽  
Black Migration ◽  
Net Migration ◽  
Promised Land ◽  
The North ◽  
Black Economic ◽  
Skill Groups ◽  
Over Time

Four million blacks left the South from 1940 to 1970, doubling the northern black workforce. I exploit variation in migrant flows within skill groups over time to estimate the elasticity of substitution by race. I then use this estimate to calculate counterfactual rates of wage growth. I find that black wages in the North would have been around 7 percent higher in 1970 if not for the migrant influx, while white wages would have remained unchanged. On net, migration was an avenue for black economic advancement, but the migration created both winners and losers.

Competition in the Promised Land

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah Platt Boustan
Keyword(s):  
Labor Markets ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Black Workers ◽  
Black Migration ◽  
Racial Change ◽  
Local Public Services ◽  
Promised Land ◽  
The North ◽  
Black Economic

From 1940 to 1970, nearly four million black migrants left the American rural South to settle in the industrial cities of the North and West. This book provides a comprehensive account of the long-lasting effects of the influx of black workers on labor markets and urban space in receiving areas. Traditionally, the Great Black Migration has been lauded as a path to general black economic progress. This book challenges this view, arguing instead that the migration produced winners and losers within the black community. The book shows that migrants themselves gained tremendously, more than doubling their earnings by moving North. But these new arrivals competed with existing black workers, limiting black–white wage convergence in Northern labor markets and slowing black economic growth. Furthermore, many white households responded to the black migration by relocating to the suburbs. White flight was motivated not only by neighborhood racial change but also by the desire on the part of white residents to avoid participating in the local public services and fiscal obligations of increasingly diverse cities. Employing historical census data and state-of-the-art econometric methods, this book revises our understanding of the Great Black Migration and its role in the transformation of American society.

Black Migration from the South in Historical Context

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah Platt Boustan
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Labor Demand ◽  
Economic Returns ◽  
Birth Cohorts ◽  
The South ◽  
Black Migration ◽  
The North ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Northern Cities ◽  
European Immigration

This chapter explains that the mobility of black southerners began increasing in the birth cohorts born immediately after the Civil War. Many of these moves took place within the South. Despite plentiful industrial jobs in the “thousand furnaces” of northern cities at the turn of the twentieth century, the potential wage benefits of settling in the North was dampened by the absence of a migrant network that southern blacks could use to secure employment upon arrival. Large flows of northward migration awaited a period of abnormally high economic returns, which arose during World War I. Circa 1915, northern factories supplying the war effort experienced a surge in labor demand, coupled with a temporary freeze in European immigration, which encouraged northern employers to turn to other sources of labor.

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah Platt Boustan
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Labor Demand ◽  
Housing Markets ◽  
Black Migration ◽  
The North ◽  
Economic Progress ◽  
Industrial Cities ◽  
Black Economic ◽  
Black Residents

This introductory chapter outlines the central themes and methodologies underpinning this book. It discusses the factors for slow black economic progress in the North following the Great Black Migration. Despite the promise of the North and despite optimistic predictions, black migration to industrial cities did not lead to economic parity with whites either for the migrants themselves or for their children during the mid-twentieth century. This chapter introduces a new element to the story by pointing out that that the persistent influx of black migrants to northern labor and housing markets had created competition for existing black residents in an economic setting already constrained by weakening labor demand and northern racism.

Black Migration, White Flight

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah Platt Boustan
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Highway Construction ◽  
White Flight ◽  
World War ◽  
The South ◽  
Black Migration ◽  
The North ◽  
Economic Forces ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

This chapter presents new causal evidence on the relationship between black arrivals to cities and white departures, a trend referred to as “white flight.” The simultaneity of black in-migration from the South and white relocation to the suburbs, both of which peaked from 1940 to 1970, suggests that the two population flows may be related. This chapter uses variation in the timing of black in-migration to the seventy largest cities in the North and West to distinguish white flight from other causes of suburbanization. It argues that while white suburbanization was primarily motivated by economic forces, including rising incomes, new highway construction, and the falling cost of credit in the decades after World War II, white departures from the city were also, in part, a reaction to black in-migration.

Inverse regional responses to climate change and fishing intensity by the recreational rockfish (Sebastes spp.) fishery in California

2004 ◽  
Vol 61 (12) ◽  
pp. 2499-2510 ◽  
Author(s):  
William A Bennett ◽  
Kimy Roinestad ◽  
Laura Rogers-Bennett ◽  
Les Kaufman ◽  
Deb Wilson-Vandenberg ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Principal Component ◽  
Fishing Effort ◽  
Interactive Effects ◽  
Catch Per Unit Effort ◽  
The South ◽  
Annual Fish ◽  
Ocean Climate ◽  
The North ◽  
Regional Responses ◽  
Over Time

The interactive effects of ocean climate and fishing pressure on nearshore rockfishes (Sebastes spp.) were examined using historical commercial passenger fishing vessel catch records from California. Principal component analysis was used to characterize the dominant patterns in catch per unit effort (CPUE) over time (1957–1999) and space (10′ latitude × 10′ longitude blocks). Ocean climate explained 60% of the variation in CPUE and revealed opposite responses in northern and southern California. In warm El Niño years, CPUE was 4.2 times higher in the north and 1.8 times lower in the south. CPUE responded similarly to low-frequency climate shifts by increasing in the north and decreasing in the south after 1976–1977. Four geographic regions responded as discrete units to environmental forcing and fishing intensity: North, Central, South, and Channel Islands. Over time, annual fish landings declined sharply in the South, with fishing effort remaining stationary and high relative to that in the other regions. In the North, landings and fishing effort remained tightly coupled, with effort an order of magnitude lower than in the South. These findings support a management strategy for nearshore rockfishes in California based on regional responses to ocean climate and fishing intensity.

Changes in Wage Inequality in Mexico: A Decomposition Analysis

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Tello
Keyword(s):  
Wage Inequality ◽  
Decomposition Method ◽  
National Level ◽  
Decomposition Analysis ◽  
Wage Growth ◽  
Earnings Inequality ◽  
The South ◽  
The North

We analyse the changes in earnings inequality in Mexico and the Mexican regions from 1987 to 2008. Using the Jenkins-van Kern decomposition method, we distinguish two major components: progressivity, which reflects the pro-poor (or pro-rich) orientation of wage growth, and re-ranking, which measures the movements of individuals in the wage hierarchy. At the national level, progressivity has been systematically pro-poor, but re-ranking has to a large extent offset this pro-equality dynamic. Similar variations are found for the Mexican regions. The South, the Border and the Centre have, however, witnessed a decrease in inequality, whereas inequality has increased in the North and the Capital regions.

Who Left the South and How Did They Fare?

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah Platt Boustan
Keyword(s):  
Family Background ◽  
The South ◽  
Earnings Growth ◽  
Occupational Distribution ◽  
The North ◽  
The Family ◽  
Black Migrants ◽  
Southern Migrants ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Do So

This chapter shows that, for the southern blacks, migration is a route to economic advancement. To do so, the chapter first investigates the family background of black migrants leaving the South, revealing that young migrants living in the North in 1940 were drawn from households at both the top and the bottom of the occupational distribution. After arriving at their destinations, black migrants did not suffer an earnings penalty in the northern economy, but neither did they out-earn northern-born blacks as some have suggested. Rather, southern migrants earned just as much as northern-born blacks upon arrival in the North and experienced a similar pace of earnings growth over time.

Differential attainment at school

2018 ◽  
pp. 65-80
Author(s):  
Stephen Gorard
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
School System ◽  
Moral Panics ◽  
The South ◽  
School Meals ◽  
Sensitive Measure ◽  
Free School ◽  
The North ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Over Time

This chapter looks in more detail at some of the patterns of attainment in Chapter 3, such as by sex and area of residence. While these patterns change over time, all of them give further clues as to why the patterns themselves exist. As such, this chapter looks at some of the evidence on what were ‘moral panics’ at the time, such as the failure of pupils in Wales and the increasing under-achievement of boys and of parts of the United Kingdom. It also suggests that using the more sensitive measure of the duration of poverty (years with free school meals, or FSM) has much to recommend it. Using the number of years a student has been eligible for FSM, and how segregated a school system is by poverty and other indicators of disadvantage, it is possible to explain substantive differences such as the apparently superior attainment of schools in the South of England compared to the North.

scholarly journals A Tale of Two Afghanistans: Comparative Governance and Insurgency in the North and South

Asian Survey ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 735-758
Author(s):  
Neil A. Englehart
Keyword(s):  
The South ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Regional Variations ◽  
The North ◽  
History Of ◽  
North And South ◽  
Comparative Stability ◽  
Over Time

Afghanistan is often depicted as a failing state, but its failures display distinctive patterns over time and space. Regional variations in governance have been important in shaping the ways the Afghan state has failed and the consequences of these failures. This article argues that a history of better governance in the north facilitated the disarmament of militia warlords and comparative stability. By contrast, the south has a long history of minimal formal governance, creating opportunities for increased Taliban insurgency.

scholarly journals Trends in the numbers of red kangaroos and emus on either side of the South Australian dingo fence: evidence for predator regulation?

2000 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 269 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. R. Pople ◽  
G. C. Grigg ◽  
S. C. Cairns ◽  
L. A. Beard ◽  
P. Alexander
Keyword(s):  
Canis Lupus ◽  
Predation Rate ◽  
Aerial Survey ◽  
Limiting Factor ◽  
The South ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
Red Kangaroo ◽  
Dromaius Novaehollandiae ◽  
Over Time

Most of Australia’s sheep rangelands are enclosed by a dingo-proof fence. Within these rangelands, where dingoes (Canis lupus dingo) are rare, red kangaroos (Macropus rufus) are considered to be food limited because their numbers respond to fluctuations in pasture biomass that are driven by highly variable rainfall. Outside this region, where dingoes are common, kangaroo densities are generally substantially lower, suggesting that dingoes are an important limiting factor. However, it is unclear whether dingoes can regulate kangaroo populations. In this study, red kangaroo and emu (Dromaius novaehollandiae) numbers were monitored for varying periods during 1978–92 by aerial survey on both sides of the dingo fence in three areas in the north of the South Australian pastoral zone. Densities of red kangaroos and emus were lower outside the fence, although the disparity varied between areas and over time. The similarity in the environments on both sides of the fence and the marked step in kangaroo density at the fence are consistent with dingoes strongly limiting these prey populations. In the north-east of the pastoral zone, where kangaroo and emu densities are greatest, the contrast in density across the fence was most pronounced. Furthermore, the trends in density over time differed across the fence. Outside the fence, red kangaroos and emus remained at low densities following drought as dingo numbers increased. Inside the fence, red kangaroo and emu populations showed a ‘typical’ post-drought recovery. The data therefore suggest that, in some situations, dingoes may not simply limit red kangaroo and emu populations, but also regulate them. For this to occur, predation rate would need to be density dependent at low prey densities. The availability of alternative prey, and the reduction in the numbers of all prey during drought may provide the mechanism.

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