Census data show that the ratio of black to white unemployment rates, currently in excess of 2:1, was small or nonexistent before 1940, widened dramatically during the 1940s and 1950s, and widened again in the 1980s. The authors decompose changes in the unemployment gap over the years 1880-1990...

Census data show that the ratio of black to white unemployment rates, currently in excess of 2:1, was small or nonexistent before 1940, widened dramatically during the 1940s and 1950s, and widened again in the 1980s. The authors decompose changes in the unemployment gap over the years...

Although the substantial and persistent gap between the unemployment rates of African-Americans and whites in the United States first emerged in aggregate statistics covering the 1940s and 1950s, disaggregation reveals that the gap already existed in urban areas before 1940. Using...

In much economic analysis it is a convenient fiction to suppose that changes over time in wages and employment are determined by shifts in supply or demand within a more or less competitive market framework Indeed, this framework has been effectively deployed to understand many episodes in...

We examine evidence on trends in interstate migration over the past 150 years, using data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series of the U.S. Census (IPUMS). Two measures of migration are calculated. The first considers an individual to have moved if she is residing in a state different...