“Obama, Katrina, and the Persistence of Racial Inequality”
Abstract
New benchmark estimates of Black-White income ratios for 1870, 1900, and 1940 are combined with standard post-World War census data. The resulting time series reveals that the pace of racial income convergence has generally been steady but slow, quickening only during the 1940s and the modern Civil Rights era. I explore the interpretation of the time series with a model of intergenerational transmission of inequality in which racial differences in causal factors that determine income are very large just after the Civil War and which erode slowly across subsequent generations. “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.”—W. E. B. Du Bois,The Souls of Black Folk
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
An intergenerational model with constant relative and absolute mobility is inconsistent with the persistence of income disparities by race throughout America's history.
“Hence, an intergenerational model with constant relative and absolute mobility is clearly inconsistent with the persistence of income disparities by race throughout America's history (Myrdal 1944; Duncan 1968; Margo 2016).”
From Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: an Intergenerational Perspective* (2020) · cites this paper as Margo 2016
Differences in economic outcomes by race have persisted for centuries in the United States and continue up to the present day.
“Differences in economic outcomes by race have persisted for centuries in the United States and continue up to the present day (Myrdal 1944; Duncan 1968; Margo 2016).”
From Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: an Intergenerational Perspective* (2020) · cites this paper as Margo 2016
Cites
Cutler, D. M., & Glaeser, E. L. (1997) · The Quarterly Journal of Economics · doi:10.1162/003355397555361 · Cited by 1,241 · see citing works
Understanding the Black-White Test Score Gap in the First Two Years of School
Fryer, R. G., & Levitt, S. D. (2004) · Review of Economics and Statistics · doi:10.1162/003465304323031049 · Cited by 936 · see citing works
The Black-White Test Score Gap Through Third Grade
Fryer, R. G. (2006) · American Law and Economics Review · doi:10.1093/aler/ahl003 · Cited by 422 · cited 1× · see citing works
“A racial gap in test scores now emerges very early in school, and it remains stubbornly present in later grades, even after controlling for a long list of family background and school variables (Fryer and Levitt 2004a, 2006).”
Background
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: an Intergenerational Perspective*
Chetty, R., Hendren, N., Jones, M. R., & Porter, S. R. (2020) · The Quarterly Journal of Economics · doi:10.1093/qje/qjz042 · Cited by 842 · see citing works
- Authors
- Margo, R. A.
- Affiliations
- Boston University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Margo, Robert A.
- ORCID
- Margo, Robert A.
- Venue
- The Journal of Economic History
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2016-05-18
- Volume
- 76
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 301-341
- ISSN
- 0022-0507 (ISSN-L)
- 1471-6372
- OpenAlex
- W2268491423
- Cited by
- 81
- References
- 3
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 9 · 2016: 1
- FWCI
- 13.44
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- The Journal of Economic History (publishedVersion)
- OpenBU (Boston University) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Historical Economic and Social Studies
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Income, Poverty, and Inequality
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Intergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies
- Keywords
- racial income inequality, intergenerational transmission of inequality, civil rights era, Reconstruction, historical income data, W. E. B. Du Bois, color line
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
