To arrive at a tenable interpretation of black history, it is important to resolve the conflict between my measure-retrospective years of schooling completed-and Robert Margo's measure-prospective accumulation across ages of cohort-specific attendance rates. My series reconciled the apparent inconsistency between the stagnant pre-1940 black-white income ratios and what scholars had previously thought was a steady narrowing of racial education differences. Margo's series not only would restore that incon

Among the many disturbing changes in the structure of wages in recent years, the stagnation in the male racial wage gap may be the most disheartening. Race remains America's oldest and most persistent cause of social and economic disparity, but many of us had been encouraged by the steady and significant economic progress since the Second World War. The recent stagnation challenges that optimism. In this paper, I attempt to identify the reasons why the wage stagnation took place. Many Americans, particularly those in the media and political arena, believe they already know the reason. According to them, this stagnation is the predictable consequence of the affirmative-action policies associated with the Reagan administration. One reason why many believe that the Reagan era deserves principal responsibility for the racial stagnation is the belief that Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) resources were gutted during this period. EEOC inflation-adjusted budgets grew almost 15 percent per year during the 1970's. While there was some slowdown in the last half of the decade, constantdollar EEOC budgets expanded by 7.2 percent per year during the Carter administration, and almost 1,400 budgeted positions were added to the EEOC (a growth of 50 percent) between 1976 and 1980. There is no question that the Reagan era witnessed an abrupt end to the growth in resources that would have taken place. EEOC constant-dollar budgets actually fell during this period, and the number of positions declined by almost one thousand; and as EEOC resources and personnel fell during the 1980's, so did the measurable outputs. The sharp break in the 1980's was not so much in the aggregate level of activity, but in its composition and the resources available per case. Spurred by the passage of the Age Discrimination Act in 1979, age came into its own during this decade. Starting with only 14 cases in the year after passage of the act, the number of age cases rose at an astonishing pace to over 30,000 by 1992. Even without this explosion in age-related charges, the significance of race was declining. While the number of race charges increased by 10 percent after 1980, sex charges were expanding by 40 percent. By 1992, only 40 percent of all cases involved race issues, compared to 85 percent of all charges in 1970 and 61 percent in 1980. The declining importance of race in the EEOC's agenda reflects a more general dilution of race as the core civil-rights labormarket concern. Since 1965, the road to equal rights has become very crowded. The quest for racial justice was the clear moral force behind the civil-rights act with women added in an unsuccessful attempt to scuttle the legislation. Subsequently, Hispanics have begun to rival blacks in their political clout, and protected minority-group status was extended to men over 40, those with a disability, and gays. The end result is that more than three-quarters of today's labor force enjoy protected minority-group status. Blacks are now a minority within the protected minority class, which itself represents the majority.

While contemporary rhetoric often highlights differences between races, the data show that blacks are becoming less distinguishable from whites in at least one relevant index of performance-market earnings. Relative to white males, black male earnings have gradually increased, and the rise during the 1960's and the early 1970's is larger than that observed earlier. (See Table 1.) Yet, it is clearly the contrast between white and black females that is extraordinary. Twenty years ago the average black woman employed full time was earning approximately half the wage of a similarly employed white woman. By 1975, almost complete racial parity among women had been achieved. In a recent article (1977), Finis Welch and I argued that the advance in the relative income of black males between 1960 and 1970 was due mainly to converging educational distributions by race and a narrowing in wage differentials between regions. Skill levels were relatively constant within cohorts and convergence was accomplished as increasingly similar racial cohorts entered labor markets while other less similar cohorts retired. Finally our test of affirmative action pressures indicated that before 1970 they had little impact. My first objective is to update our previous research to determine if the events of the last decade for males have continued unabated into the mid1970's. Since a complete understanding of the dynamics of blackwhite changes necessitates explaining the patterns for females, my second goal is to expand the wage comparisons to include women. The major explanations for narrowing in racial wage differences can be placed under four general categories. The central idea of the vintage hypothesis is that more recent black cohorts begin their job experiences with larger initial stocks of human capital, relative to whites, than previous cohorts. The second explanation involves migration. The rural-South to urban-North migration has partly been superceded by southern blacks moving to what are by now economically vibrant southern cities. The third category involves the effects of government affirmative action. Since 1970, it is alleged that a series of court cases imposing severe financial penalties on firms for noncompliance with affirmative action goals have added sharp teeth to government jaw boning. Finally, changes in other aspects of market work may be important in narrowing relative wages. This factor is more relevant for women than men and includes the choice of partor full-time work, unique characteristics of certain occupations, and biases due to limiting comparisons solely to working women.

Thirty years ago, Gary Becker in his now classic work, Economics of Discrimination, sparked renewed interest in an economic analysis of racial income disparities. The volumes of research papers that built on Becker's contribution over the last three decades added a great deal to what we know about the reasons for the wide income differences between the races. One reason was the emergence of several large scale micro data sets of which the 1960 census was the first. Today, analysis is based not only on the 1980 census file but also on several longitudinal data sets best represented by the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the Parnes National Longitudinal Surveys. Ironically, it is the release of micro data files from two pre-Becker data sets that appears to offer the greatest potential for answering the important questions that remain. In this paper, we use these two data sets-the 1940 and 1950 census files-in combination with the three subsequent census files to describe long-run trends in black poverty. We begin by describing purely labor market developments, but supplement that depiction with a broader look at events that impacted on the black family. The paper concludes with an examination of the downside of black economic progress-the increasing disengagement of many black men from the labor market.

This paper presents results from an unusual microdata set assembled by the authors and researchers at the Social Security Administration. The data set pools information from three sources: death certificates for residents of Washington, D.C. dying in 1967; Washington, D.C. estate tax returns; and Social Security earnings records. Under an arrangement worked out by Smith with the city of Washington and the National Center for Health Statistics, all (about 2,500) estate tax returns for 1967 decedents were matched with their death certificates. The match provided information on age, sex, race, place of birth, marital status, cause of death and assets and liabilities. Washington, D.C. has its own estate tax, which unlike the federal estate tax, starts at a very low ($1,000) filing level. A full description of this part of the data base and an estate multiplier estimate of the distribution of wealth in Washington, D.C. has been published elsewhere (Smith). This year, thanks to our colleagues, Frederick Scheuren and Wendy Alvey of the Social Security Administration, a procedure was worked out which permitted us to turn over to them our files and to obtain from them analytical results from matched records from our files and their records of covered earnings under the Social Security Act. The intended use of this data base is to estimate a lifetime savings model with earnings as a key determinant. We still may be able to do so, but the prospects look rather grim. In the spirit that science is advanced by knowing what doesn't work as well as wuiat does, we present below a few initial findings which show some promise and of a lot of statistical husbandry which bore little fruit. We shall proceed by first looking at differences in the levels of covered income reported by black and white workers, then at the wealth levels of blacks and whites, and finally at an attempt to predict the wealth of black and white workers using demographic variables and earnings records.

This paper presents estimates of the concentration of personal wealth in the United States from 1922 to 1969. These estimates lead us to conclude that the distribution of wealth (1) became significantly more equal in the 1930's and early 1940's, two periods of massive government intervention in the marketplace, and (2) has remained essentially unchanged since 1945.1 In what follows, we compare the wealth held by the richest 1.0 and 0.5 percent of the population to that of all persons. The wealth of the richest 1.0 and 0.5 percent was estimated by the estate multiplier technique.2 The wealth of all persons was derived from national balance sheets.3 The estimates presented here for the period before 1953 were developed by Robert J. Lampman using highly aggregated Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data. For 1953 and 1958 we use detailed estimates (from special IRS tabulations) by Lampman and Smith, modified slightly to take account of current knowledge. Estimates for 1962, 1965, and 1969 are new detailed estimates developed by the authors using microdata files of estate tax returns prepared by the IRS for its routine publications. Here we focus on the years since 1953. Information available from estate tax returns varies from year to year, so a number of adjustments were made to bring the estimates for individual years into conceptual alignment with one another. The alignment problem was exacerbated because the IRS has destroyed tapes of returns filed before 1963, leaving only Lampman's and Smith's printed tabulations for 1953 and 1958.4 It was impractical to reestimate the distributions for 1953 and 1958 by better methods based on current knowledge. Consequently, the estimates for 1962, 1965, and 1969 were made consistent with those for 1953 and 1958 * The Urban Institute and the Pennsylvania State University. The work reported here is part of the Urban Institute's research program on income and wealth distribution. The support of the National Science Foundation is gratefully acknowledged. 1 We wish to make clear that our concern is with temporal change and that we have sacrificed best estimates for individual years to achieve consistency over the time series. Individual figures have a downward bias of 10 to 15 percent from our best estimates of concentration. (Best estimates for 1969 may be found in Smith; similar estimates for other years will appear later.) 2 Detailed descriptions of the methodology and attendant problems can be found in Smith and Staunton Calvert, Robert J. Lampman, and Smith. I National balance sheets were constructed for a person's sector using data supplied by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Helen Stone Tice did the basic work on these special sector balance sheets. Smith provides a detailed description of the balance sheet. I A further problem resulted from the fact that the IRS erased the age field from the 1965 tape. This was most unfortunate because of all years for which the IRS has coded estate tax returns, 1965 had the most detailed classification of information. The erased data was restored by a stochastic process which took into account the relationship between age and other characteristics observable in the files for 1962 and 1969.

While human capital has been used with some success to analyze recent changes in racial income differences, scholars have repeatedly pointed to a major empirical problem that appears to severely limit the historical relevanlce and scope of skill-based theories as applied to racial questions. The challenge they raise is legitimate. Put simply, if measured skill disparities between the races narrowed throughout the twentieth century, why did income ratios first begin to converge in the 1960's? In this paper, I address this question relying on some unexploited census data by race on education, literacy, occupations, and income. Using these data that begin with the 1890 Census, I present new estimates of agespecific relative income positions of black men for all postslavery birth cohorts. In addition to reconciling the apparently inconsistent skill and income series, these income ratios offer a very different historical record than many economists believe to have been the case. To cite a prominent example, Gunnar Myrdal's classic work (1944) saw the economic position of his contemporary black America not only as dismal, but made even more so by its sense of hopelessness, given the absence of any hint of progress or change. While Myrdal's pessimism is understandable, it appears that even in his day seeds had long been sown that were already permanently altering and improving the relative economic status of black men.