The Impact of Civil Rights Laws on the Economic Welfare of Minorities

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The effectiveness of law in producing social change has long been a matter of debate, and there is no more important focus for this debate than the impact of civil rights laws on the economic welfare of minorities. Many have argued recently that federal civil rights policy has been of little value in enhancing the economic welfare of blacks in American society. With relative black economic gains largely stalled since the mid-1970's, there is considerable policy interest in determining whether and to what extent past governmental initiatives have contributed to black progress. Given the complex and varied economic, social, and governmental initiatives that were unfolding at the time, it will be a work of major significance to sort out more precisely the factors that generated large relative economic gains in the decade after 1964. This research will apply a more comprehensive and rigorous research design to assess recent claims that: 1) the Supreme Court's decision in Brown had no important impact on the civil rights movement or on the evolution of black economic progress; 2) employment discrimination law has served little function because virtually all of black economic advance has come from long-term trends of migration and improved education; and 3) the breakthrough of black employment in the textile industry merely represents the removal of Southern segregationist legislation, and that without such legal restrictions competitive markets quickly eradicate any adverse effects of private discrimination. This grant will support a comprehensive assessment of all aspects of the total federal effort directed against a way of life that excluded blacks from many sectors of Southern society in order to capture the impact of civil rights policy, including spillovers to successful employment of challenges to school segregation and voting exclusion. The research will demonstrate that a complex pattern of law - both segregationist and antidiscrimination - emerged over time and in different states and regions. The investigators will use this temporal and geographic variation in the institutional structure confronting blacks as the basis for explaining the different patterns of black economic growth in different states and regions. In addition, the investigators will compile a significant data set on school quality by state and race (where possible) going back to 1890. Once the investigators have documented the evolving patterns of the educational attainment of blacks and whites and the legal environments promoting or restricting black opportunities, they will append this information to the data on income and education found in the decennial Census tapes from 1940-1990. This will permit the investigators to undertake a comprehensive econometric assessment of the factors that have contributed to black economic advance.