Racial Heterogeneity in the U.S. Structural Transformation and Regional Convergence

Minki Kim and Munseob Lee

No 16673, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Structural transformation and regional convergence in U.S. income have been long-standing trends. Caselli and Coleman (2001) discovered that 60% of regional convergence between the U.S. South and North from 1940 to 1990 is due to structural transformation. Our replication confirms these robust findings. Examining black and white populations separately, we find the magnitude of the regional income convergence was much larger for the black workers and structural transformation explains most regional income convergence for white workers but only 30% for black workers. Extending the analysis until 2020, we observe income convergence among black workers and divergence among white workers. Structural transformation's role in income convergence or divergence from 1990 to 2020 is negligible.

Keywords: regional convergence; structural transformation; racial heterogeneity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O1 R1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2023-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-his and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published - published in: Journal of Applied Econometrics, 2024, 39 (6), 1172-1179

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp16673.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16673

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().