Race and Home Ownership, 1900 to 1990

William Collins and Robert Margo

No 7277, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The historical evolution of racial differences in income in the 20th century United States has been examined intensively by economists, but the evolution of racial differences in wealth has been examined far less. This paper uses IPUMS data to study trends in racial differences in home ownership since 1900. At the turn of the century approximately 20 percent of black adult males (ages 20 to 64) owned their homes, compared with 46 percent of white men, a gap of 26 percentage points. By 1990, the black home ownership rate had increased to 52 percent and the racial gap had fallen to 19.5 percentage points. All of the long-term rise in the rate of black home ownership, and almost all of the corresponding long-term decline in the racial gap, occurred after 1940, with the majority of both changes concentrated in the 1960 to 1980 period. We also use the IPUMS to study trends in race differences in the incidence of mortgages, and in the value of owner-occupied housing.

JEL-codes: N32 R21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
Note: DAE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published as Collins, William J. and Robert A. Margo. "Race And Home Ownership: A Century-Long View," Explorations in Economic History, 2001, v38(1,Jan), 68-92.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w7277.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:nbr:nberwo:7277

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w7277

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 ().