The Geography of Wage Discrimination in the Pre–Civil Rights South
William A. Sundstrom a1
a1 Professor and Chair, Department of Economics, Santa Clara University, 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA 95053-0385. E-mail: wsundstrom@scu.edu.
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AbstractPrior to the modern civil rights movement of the 1960s, the pay gap between African-American and white workers in the South was large overall, but also quite variable across location. Using 1940 census data, I estimate the white-black earnings gap of men for separate county groups called state economic areas, adjusting for individual differences in schooling and experience. I show that the gap was significantly greater in areas where, ceteris
paribus, blacks were a larger proportion of the workforce, plantation institutions were more prevalent, more of the population was urban, and white voters exhibited segregationist preferences.
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