• DOI:10.1017/S0022050709001119
Corpus ID: 153392904

Competition in the Promised Land: Black Migration and Racial Wage Convergence in the North, 1940-1970

@article{Boustan2008CompetitionIT,
  title={Competition in the Promised Land: Black Migration and Racial Wage Convergence in the North, 1940-1970},
  author={L. Boustan},
  journal={Labor: Public Policy & Regulation},
  year={2008}
}

L. Boustan

Published 2008

Economics

Labor: Public Policy & Regulation

Four million blacks left the South from 1940 to 1970, doubling the northern black workforce. I exploit variation in migrant flows within skill groups over time to estimate the elasticity of substitution by race. I then use this estimate to calculate counterfactual rates of wage growth. I find that black wages in the North would have been around 7 percent higher in 1970 if not for the migrant influx, while white wages would have remained unchanged. On net, migration was an avenue for black… CONTINUE READING

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