Race from the past
Neighborhood segregation and black entrepreneurship
Eric Fesselmeyer & Kiat Ying Seah
Economics Letters, May 2017, Pages 88-91
Abstract:
We examine the causal effect of neighborhood segregation on black entrepreneurship. We address neighborhood sorting by analyzing city averages and omitted variable bias by instrumenting for segregation using historical railroad configurations. We find that segregation has a significant positive effect: a 10 percentage point increase in the dissimilarity index decreases the racial gap by about 3.3 percentage points. To minimize the effect of cross-city sorting, we use a narrower sample constructed from outcomes of young adults and find a similar effect. Our findings are important because historically, entrepreneurship has been an avenue out of poverty, and entrepreneurship has been promoted as a way to decrease welfare and unemployment.
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Racial Resentment, Hurricane Sandy, and the Spillover of Racial Attitudes into Evaluations of Government Organizations
Geoffrey Sheagley, Philip Chen & Christina Farhart
Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study explores the relationship between individuals' racial attitudes, exposure to information cuing them to think about President Obama, and evaluations of the government's response to Hurricane Sandy. Using a split ballot experiment embedded in a large internet panel fielded during the 2012 presidential election, we show that respondents' evaluations of President Obama's response to Hurricane Sandy were based on their racial attitudes. We next examined the possibility for racial attitudes to "spill over" into how people evaluate governmental institutions and organizations associated with President Obama. We found evidence that respondents who were cued to think about President Obama and were impacted by Hurricane Sandy were more likely to base their evaluations of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's response to the disaster on their racial attitudes. In short, linking President Obama to Hurricane Sandy led people to ground their evaluations of an organization tasked with coordinating the response to Hurricane Sandy in their racial attitudes. Our research suggests that racial attitudes are important predictors of how individuals perceive President Obama's effectiveness as well as the efficacy of related government organizations.
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Living in the Red: Black Steelworkers and the Wealth Gap
Venise Wagner
Labor Studies Journal, March 2017, Pages 52-78
Abstract:
A database built from recently released archival bankruptcy records shows that African-American steelworkers compared with white steelworkers were disproportionately represented as bankruptcy petitioners soon after the 1959 national steel strike began. On its face, it would appear that the strike forced low-level workers in the mills toward a financial precipice, but a deeper exploration finds that black steelworkers in Chicago at this time, despite their security in the union, faced a myriad of financial barriers, which when combined hindered workers' ability to build wealth and lead their families into the middle class. Even though black workers enjoyed the benefits of the union's promise to deliver wage and pension security, as well as better workplace conditions, the union failed to address the most pressing matter for black workers - equity in the workplace. In addition, the union's outward look at civil rights did little to combat social policies that left black steelworkers disenfranchised along with other African-Americans in Chicago. Union policies, in contrast, secured coveted positions for white steelworkers in the mills and fortified their ability to build wealth and higher economic status for their families. The combined impact of financial and social barriers for blacks in the mills - workplace segregation, residential segregation, restricted access to mortgage financing, susceptibility to predatory lending, and usurious credit practices - are explored. Michael Brown et al.'s theory of disaccumulation of economic opportunity helps illustrate the enduring wealth gap between white and black workers, even those African-Americans who held well-paying steel manufacturing jobs.
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Class, Race, Ethnicity, and Justice in Safe Drinking Water Compliance
David Switzer & Manuel Teodoro
Social Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Methods: We match 2010-2013 Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) compliance records with demographic and economic data for U.S. local government water utilities serving populations greater than 1,000. Statistical regression isolates direct and interactive relationships between communities' racial/ethnic populations, SES, and SDWA compliance.
Results: We find that community racial/ethnic composition predicts drinking water quality, but also that SES conditions the effect; specifically, black and Hispanic populations most strongly predict SDWA violations in low-SES communities.
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Race, Generational Status, and the Dynamics of First-Marriage Transitions Among Black Immigrants in the United States
Kevin Thomas
Journal of Family Issues, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous studies give limited attention to the marital outcomes of Black immigrants in the United States. In this study, therefore, the main objective of the analysis is to examine the relationship between race-ethnicity, generational status, and first marriage among Black immigrants. Using data from the American Community Survey, the study tests two hypotheses. The first is that Black immigrants face greater constraints to first-marriage transition compared with non-Black immigrants. The second is that increasing generational status results in a convergence in the outcomes of Black immigrants with those of U.S.-born Blacks. The results show that Black immigrants enter first marriages at older ages compared with non-Black immigrants. With increasing generational status, however, Black immigrants are more likely to enter first marriages at younger ages compared with U.S.-born Blacks, suggesting that as assimilation increases, Black immigrants are less likely to have outcomes that are consistent with a retreat from marriage.
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African Americans and American Values: Does South Matter?
Jas Sullivan et al.
Social Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Method: Using unique survey data, with large oversamples of African Americans, this article explores whether southern blacks have a more positive opinion of the American system than African Americans who reside outside the south.
Results: We find a "southern effect" occurs among African Americans. Southern blacks express more support for traditionally defined American political and social values than nonsouthern blacks; however, this gap is less than a third the size of the regional gap among whites.
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A note on the macroeconomic consequences of ethnic/racial tension
Peren Arin, Murat Koyuncu & Nicola Spagnolo
Economics Letters, forthcoming
Abstract:
While many studies stressed the importance of ethnic fractionalization on long-term economic growth, neither ethnic fractionalization always leads to ethnic conflict nor the intensity of conflict is constant over time. To address this potential bias, we construct an ethnic/racial tension index by using the number of US news articles that contain certain keywords. Utilizing this index we test the predictions of a simple theoretical model in a Markov Switching framework which allows to identify the impact of ethnic/racial tension in different states of the economy. Consistent with our theoretical predictions, results show that the magnitude of the impact of ethnic/racial tension is larger during low-growth periods.
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Returns to School Resources in the Jim Crow South
Celeste Carruthers & Marianne Wanamaker
Explorations in Economic History, forthcoming
Abstract:
We estimate returns to school resources in the Jim Crow era, as measured by young males' 1940 wage earnings, occupational status, and cognitive aptitude scores. Results point to a 16 cent annual return on each $1 invested in public schools. To the question of whether some school inputs mattered more than others, we find comparable 25-32 cent returns per dollar invested in extended school years, teacher salaries, and smaller classes. School spending and inputs had much more bearing on labor market outcomes than aptitude scores. We document diminishing returns to school expenditures, which, in combination with segregated schools, resulted in higher returns to expenditures in black schools relative to white.