Volume 5, Number 4 (Fall) 1970
Ashenfelter, Orley. 1970. "Changes in Labor Market Discrimination Over Time." Journal of Human Resources 5(4):403-430.
This article offers some evidence on what effect changes in discriminatory practices in labor markets may have had on the relative earnings of black workers. Interest focuses on estimating the extent of any change in the relative earnings of nonwhite workers which may be attributed to changes in discrimination in the postwar period and testing hypotheses about the effect which cyclical swings in aggregate labor market activity may have had on discrimination. The results suggest that there was little change in the extent of discrimination against black men over the period 1950 to 1966, that there was a significant reduction in the extent of discrimination against black women over this period, and that cyclical swings in aggregate labor market activity had little effect on the extent of discrimination.
The author is Assistant Professor of Economics at Princeton University. The author is indebted to Glen Cain, Steve Goldfeld, John Pencavel, Albert Rees, Lester Thurow, and Phyllis Wallace for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. The work underlying it was partially supported by a research grant to the Industrial Relations Section at Princeton University and financed through OMPER of the U.S. Department of Labor. Only the author is responsible for the views expressed in this article.
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