CAREER: Long-Run Determinants of Racial Inequality in the US

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Economic disparities between Black and White Americans remain one of the most striking forms of inequality in the US today. Much of the economics literature on racial inequality focuses on the role of discrimination, yet this framework explains a declining share of the gaps between Black and White Americans. This CAREER research uses three projects and a historical perspective to identify the determinants of racial disparities and shed light on the channels through which these gaps occur and persist. The project combines original data collection with natural experiments and focuses on historical and institutional determinants of racial income and wealth inequality. The first project studies the effects of political disenfranchisement of Blacks in Jim Crow South on Black wealth accumulation while the second project studies the role of US social insurance and labor policy design in generating and perpetuating racial wealth inequality. The third project will study the link between the Great Migration North and mass incarceration policies in the North that disproportionately affected Black men, putting them at a severe disadvantage in the labor market. Each of these projects involves the collection and digitization of large original historical data. The results of this research project will provide important inputs into policies to reduce income and wealth inequality as well as generate equitable growth. This CAREER research uses three projects to advance the literature in economic history and labor economics. The first project explores the determinants of slow racial wealth convergence from the abolition of slavery to the present, testing for the effect of political dis-empowerment on wealth accumulation by studying the growth of Black wealth under Jim Crow. It digitizes annual, county-level records of Black and White wealth for six southern states and uses the staggered rollout of state laws limiting Black franchise to assess the impact of franchise restrictions on economic mobility. The second project explores the role of US social insurance and labor policy design in the evolution of racial inequality. The project digitizes state-level unemployment insurance policy from 1937 to 2020 and examines the role of demographic change on state policies as well as the impact of changes in eligibility and generosity on racial gaps. The third project investigates the link between the Great Migration North and the phenomenon of mass incarceration, which disproportionately affected Black men and placed them at serious disadvantage in the labor market. The project constructs causal jurisdiction severity measures from criminal court records from dozens of northern states as well as data on municipal ordinances spanning the 20th century. It uses these data to investigate the link between the Great Migration North and increased reliance on punitive social policy in American cities that leads to mass incarceration of Black men. The results of this research project will provide important inputs into policies to reduce income inequality as well as generate equitable growth.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.