The Labor Market Effects of the 1960s Riots

William Collins and Robert Margo

No 10243, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Between 1964 and 1971, hundreds of riots erupted in American cities, resulting in large numbers of injuries, deaths, and arrests, as well as in considerable property damage concentrated in predominantly black neighborhoods. There have been few studies of an econometric nature that examine the impact of the riots on the economic status of African Americans, or on the cities in which the riots took. We present two complementary empirical analyses. The first uses aggregate, city-level data on income, employment, unemployment, and the area's racial composition from the published volumes of the federal censuses. We estimate the riot effect' by both ordinary least squares and two-stage least squares. The second uses individual-level census data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series. The findings suggest that the riots had negative effects on blacks' income and employment that were economically significant and that may have been larger in the long run (1960-1980) than in the short run (1960-1970). We view these findings as suggestive rather than definitive for two reasons. First, the data are not detailed enough to identify the precise mechanisms at work. Second, the wave of riots may have had negative spillover effects to cities that did not experience severe riots; if so, we would tend to underestimate the riots' overall effect.

JEL-codes: J0 R0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo and nep-his
Note: DAE LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Published as Gale, W. and J. Pack (eds.) Brookings-Wharton Papers on Urban Affairs 2004. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2004.
Published as William J. (William Joseph) Collins & Robert A. (Robert Andrew) Margo, 2004. "The Labor Market Effects of the 1960s Riots," Brookings-Wharton Papers on Urban Affairs, vol 2004(1), pages 1-46.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10243.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Labor Market Effects of the 1960s Riots (2003)
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:nbr:nberwo:10243

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10243

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().