Economy
The 100-Year-Old Penalty for Being Black
Inherited racial disadvantage, more than poverty, explains why generations of African Americans have not reached economic parity with whites.
It’s 1880. The Civil War ended 15 years ago. Three years ago, federal troops withdrew from the South. Now, children of black and white workers of similar economic standing are able to climb up the economic ladder at the same pace. So by the start of the next decade, the median black worker earns more than around 30 percent of the nation’s labor force.
Of course, that scenario isn’t real. It’s a counterfactual from a new working paper published in the National Bureau for Economic Research, by historian William J. Collins and economist Marianne H. Wanamaker. In reality, black workers reached that 30th percentile milestone a full 100 years later, in 2000.