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Title: Identifying Individual Changes in Race and Ethnicity: An Example from U.S. Panel Data, 1880-1940

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2015

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Abstract: This paper investigates the fluidity of ethnic identity and the extent to which individuals experience a change in reported ethnicity during their lifetime in the historicalU.S. context. First, we document that approximately 21 to 22% of males identified as mixed race and 16 to 17% of males identified as black will pass for white at somepoint in their lifetime. Second, we show that passing is almost always accompanied by geographic relocation and typically occurs when an individual is twenty to thirty years of age. Third, by tracing an individual over time, we find that a significant number of those who pass for white will later un-pass. Finally, imputed wage data suggeststhat the probability of passing is positively correlated with the black-white wage gap in the county of birth. Our results indicate race is fluid, race change is a quantitatively important phenomenon and likely to be endogenous to economic variables.

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Authors: Qian, Nancy; Nix, Emily

Publisher: Yale University

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Race and Ethnicity

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