Full Citation
Title: Tasks and Black-White Inequality Over the Long Twentieth Century
Citation Type: Working Paper
Publication Year: 2024
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3386/w32545
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Abstract: We present new evidence on the long-run trend of occupational task content by race in the United States, 1900-2021. Black workers began the transition to better paid, cognitive-intensive modern jobs at least a generation after white workers; substantial convergence only occurred from 1960 onwards. Longitudinal data suggests that transitions to new task content were racially biased: Black men moved to jobs with lower rewarded task content than white men, conditional on initial task content, though gaps decreased after World War II. Routine-intensive Black workers were less likely to move up into non-routine analytic work compared to white workers in both historical and modern periods. The results suggest that task-displacement shocks, such as automating routine-manual work, widen Black-white inequality.
Url: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w32545/w32545.pdf
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Authors: Gray, Rowena; O'Keefe, Siobhan M; Quincy, Sarah; Ward, Zachary
Series Title: NBER Working Paper Series
Publication Number: 32545
Institution: National Bureau of Economic Research
Pages: 1-72
Publisher Location:
Data Collections: IPUMS USA, IPUMS USA - Ancestry Full Count Data
Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Race and Ethnicity
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