Volume 9, Number 4 (Fall) 1974
Bell, Duran. 1974. "Why Participation Rates of Black and White Wives Differ." Journal of Human Resources 9(4):465-479.
Analysis of labor force participation of black and white wives by family personal characteristics, from the 1967 Survey of Economic Opportunity, revealed that 61.4 percent of black wives and 46.7 percent of white wives worked in 1966. Full-time work was more common among black wives in better educated, more stable families, and among white wives in less educated, poorer, unstable families. The reverse applied to part-time employment. Results reflect the opening of white-collar jobs to qualified black women, as an alternative to domestic service. Strong sexist barriers to high-status employment of women explain the relatively low participation of upper middle-class white wives.
The author is on the staff of the RAND Corporation and the University of California, Irvine. The work reported in this paper was conducted while I was on the staff of the Brookings Institution. I would like to express my appreciation to those who were willing to review an earlier draft of this paper, especially Robert Reishauer, Alice Rivlin, Bennett Harrison, and Edward Denison.
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