The Fluidity of Race: “Passing” in the United States, 1880-1940

Emily Nix and Nancy Qian

No 20828, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper quantifies the extent to which individuals experience changes in reported racial identity in the historical U.S. context. Using the full population of historical Censuses for 1880-1940, we document that over 19% of black males “passed” for white at some point during their lifetime, around 10% of whom later “reverse-passed” to being black; passing was accompanied by geographic relocation to communities with a higher percentage of whites and occurred the most in Northern states. The evidence suggests that passing was positively associated with better political-economic and social opportunities for whites relative to blacks. As such, endogenous race is likely to be a quantitatively important phenomenon.

JEL-codes: B4 J15 N3 N31 N32 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
Note: DAE POL
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