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Title: The Impact of the Great Migration on Employment Outcomes of Black Northerners

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2018

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Abstract: Prior to the Great Migration, there were small communities of middle-class blacks living in the North. While research has investigated the importance of migration improving the fortunes of southern-born blacks, less is known about the impact of the Great Migration on existing black communities. I build a new panel dataset of black northerners to study how the arrival of new black residents shaped their economic fortunes. I exploit variation in the extent of in-migration across northern counties and instrument for black inflows by interacting pre-existing demographic patterns in the South with earlier black settlement patterns in the North. I find that in-migration resulted in significantly less employment but better occupational attainment for black northerners in 1930. The evidence shows that the effect of southern black in-migration on northern-born black outcomes is nuanced: low status northern-born blacks experienced more competition in the labor market, while high status northern-born blacks benefited more from occupational upgrading opportunities generated by in-migration.

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Authors: Li, Sijie

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Migration and Immigration, Other, Race and Ethnicity

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