The Wage Gains of African-American Women in the 1940s

Martha Bailey and William Collins

No 10621, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The weekly wage gap between black and white female workers narrowed by 15 percentage points during the 1940s. We employ a semi-parametric technique to decompose changes in the distribution of wages. We find that changes in worker characteristics (such as education, occupation and industry, and region of residence) can account for a significant portion of wage convergence between black and white women, but that changes in the wage structure, including large black-specific gains within regions, occupations, industries, and educational groups, made the largest contributions. The single most important contributing factor to the observed convergence was a sharp increase in the relative wages of service workers (where black workers were heavily concentrated) even as black women moved out of domestic service jobs.

JEL-codes: J7 N3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-lab
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Published as Bailey, Martha J. & Collins, William J., 2006. "The Wage Gains of African-American Women in the 1940s," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 66(03), pages 737-777, September.

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