A Fifty-Year Perspective on the Declining Significance of Race in the Occupational Attainment of...

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A Fifty-Year Perspective on the Declining Significance of Race in the OccupationalAttainment of White and Black MenAuthor(s): Arthur Sakamoto and Jessie M. TzengReviewed work(s):Source: Sociological Perspectives, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Summer, 1999), pp. 157-179Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1389626 .

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Sociological Perspectives Vol. 42, No. 2, pp. 157-179 Copyright ? 1999 Pacific Sociological Association ISSN 0731-1214

A FIFTY-YEAR PERSPECTIVE ON THE DECLINING SIGNIFICANCE OF RACE IN THE OCCUPATIONAL

ATTAINMENT OF WHITE AND BLACK MEN ARTHUR SAKAMOTO*

University of Texas

JESSIE M. TZENG McGill University

ABSTRACT: Using William J. Wilson's thesis of the declining significance of race as our theoretical context, we investigate comparable models of occupational attainment before and after the civil rights movement. The results indicate that in the later period the net disadvantage of being black is consistently lower than in the pre-civil rights period. Furthermore, in the later period the effects of class among black men are consistently greater than are the effects of race. These findings support Wilson's thesis of the declining significance of race.

William J. Wilson's The Declining Significance of Race (1980) has generated much discussion and controversy (e.g., Austin and Stack 1988; Collins 1983; Feagin 1991; Geschwender and Carroll-Seguin 1990; Marrett 1980; Morris 1996; Payne 1989; Pettigrew 1980; Wilson 1989). By contrast, systematic empirical evidence to evaluate Wilson's hypothesis of the declining significance of race in labor market outcomes has been less forthcoming. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to provide empirical evidence that will improve our understanding of the degree to which black men are disadvantaged in the labor market and to assess the extent to which this disadvantage may have changed during the twentieth century. Our results address Wilson's view that the net effect of race has declined and that class has become more important than race in determining the labor market attainments of black men.

The Declining Significance of Race

We briefly summarize Wilson's The Declining Significance of Race, a historical analysis of black-white race relations. According to Wilson, as American society

* Direct all correspondence to: Arthur Sakamoto, Department of Sociology, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712; e-mail: [email protected].



158 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 42, Number 2,1999

modernized, class characteristics became more important than race per se in determining labor market rewards. Broadly understood as the socioeconomic and human capital resources that improve one's market position, Wilson argues that class (i.e., in this Weberian formulation) now has a larger effect than does race on one's labor market success in modern America.

In his historical analysis, Wilson identifies three stages of black-white race relations. The preindustrial period ranges from colonial times to the Civil War. The industrial stage refers to the period from the latter part of the nineteenth century to about the time of the New Deal. The modern industrial period refers to the post-World War II era but "really begins to crystallize during the 1960's and 1970's" (Wilson 1980:3) with the passage of civil rights legislation.

During the preindustrial stage, blacks suffered racial caste oppression in the form of legalized slavery that was organized primarily to serve the interests of plantation owners. Wilson applies orthodox Marxist theory to analyze this period and argues that plantation owners promoted racial oppression, racial prejudice, and racist ideology in order to improve the profitability of the plantation economy. Black slavery increased the capacity of owners to extract surplus value from black slaves, to counteract the demands of white workers, and to generally reduce solidarity among the working-class segments of the plantation economy.

Blacks also faced direct racial oppression in the industrial period, but Wilson argues that during this stage split labor market theory is more applicable. In the industrial period, the interests of the higher-paid white working class (rather than the plantation owners, as was the case in the antebellum South) were primarily promoted by racial discrimination and racist ideology. That is, the white working class was able to obtain higher wages by using racism as a tool to monopolize the higher-skilled work positions, to impose racist educational inequality, to prevent blacks from developing the higher skills necessary to compete for better jobs, and to deny blacks the political resources that would enable them to press for public policies designed to promote mobility and fair competition in the labor market.

Wilson (1980:3) describes the modern industrial period as the "progressive transition from racial inequalities to class inequalities." In contrast to the two earlier stages, the modern industrial period is characterized by "a shift which has increased the importance of economic class position, thereby decreasing the importance of race in determining the extent to which individual blacks have access to or are able to develop resources deemed important for life chances and survival" (1980:88). After the civil rights movement, highly educated blacks enjoyed greatly increased opportunities for better-paying jobs in the corporate sector of the economy. Although poverty and unemployment still remain rela- tively high in the black population as a whole, this situation derives less from racial status per se than from class characteristics that are more marginal on average (such as lower educational attainment); so while less educated blacks do tend to be relegated to the secondary sector of the labor market, more highly educated blacks are able to compete effectively with whites for better-paid, white-collar employment. ' This declining significance of race implies that "it would be nearly impossible to comprehend the economic plight of lower-class blacks in the inner city by focusing solely on racial oppression, that is, the overt and explicit effort of



A Fifty-Year Perspective on the Declining Significance of Race 159

whites to keep blacks in a subjugated state.... [U]nlike in previous periods of Amer- ican race relations, economic class is now a more important factor than race in determining job placement for blacks" (1980:120).

Previous Literature

To provide some systematic empirical support for his argument of the declining significance of race, Wilson (1980:168) refers to classic studies of occupational attainment. The first is Blau and Duncan's (1967) analysis of the 1962 Occupa- tional Change in a Generation (OCGI) survey, which revealed a high level of labor market discrimination against black men. As noted by Wilson (1980:168), the "survey disclosed that discrimination so dominated the labor-market position of blacks that the socioeconomic status of their parents was of little consequence." This lack of any advantage among black men of having higher-status parents reflected the strong basic tendency of the labor market to allocate the vast majority of black men to employment in a lower manual occupation regardless of how much education they were able to achieve. In short, the educational attainment of black men (which was frequently higher among those with higher-status parents) was not rewarded in the same way that it was among white men, thus indicating a high degree of labor market discrimination against African-American men in the the pre-civil rights period.

In 1973 a follow-up Occupational Change in a Generation survey (OCGII) was conducted under the supervision of David Featherman and Robert Hauser who published a detailed monograph (Featherman and Hauser 1978) comparing and analyzing both the OCGI and the OCGII surveys. A portion of this monograph was published first as a journal article in 1977, which Wilson cites. In particular, Wilson (1980:168) notes that "David Featherman and Robert Hauser replicated the earlier Blau and Duncan survey and found that the impact of family back- ground closely resembled that of white men." In other words, the socioeconomic attainment process for black men had come to be more similar to that for white men, indicating that social class had become a significant factor for black men in the same way that it already had been for white men. Thus black men who obtained higher levels of educational attainment (which was more typical among those from higher social class origins) had greater socioeconomic attainment than was evident in the OCGI survey. This finding is consistent with Wilson's view that labor market opportunities were substantially improved for black men in the post-civil rights period (see also Kerbo 1996:339).

Hout (1984), who also analyzed the OCGI and OCGII survey data, reached similar conclusions. Whereas Featherman and Hauser's work (1978) was a general sociological study of the various processes involved in social stratification, Hout was more specifically concerned with addressing Wilson's thesis of the declining significance of race. One of Hout's major contributions is to use log-linear models to investigate men's intragenerational occupational mobility from 1962 to 1973. His basic results indicate that many black men experienced upward occupational mobility during this eleven-year period, but this tendency was strongest for black men whose fathers had higher occupational attainment. That is, social class had




become an important factor in the socioeconomic attainment of black men. As summarized by Hout (1984:320-21), "The available evidence-both here and else- where-supports Wilson. By 1973 the occupational standing of black men depended on socioeconomic criteria to a greater extent than was true in 1962."

One study that used data that span a slightly longer period is Farley's (1984), which investigates the Public Use Microdata Samples (PUMS) from the 1960, 1970, and 1980 U.S. Censuses. Regarding the study of occupational attainment, however, Farley's analysis is apparently limited to bivariate statistics. They do reveal some decline in the racial differential in the proportion employed in white- collar occupations between 1960 and 1980 (Farley 1984:48). But without multivari- ate analysis, which controls for the effects of social class variables such as education, such bivariate results do not provide any information about the relative importance of race versus class in accounting for that bivariate differential.

In sum, the results from previous studies are consistent with the view that the net effect of race on occupational attainment declined in the post-civil rights period. However, these results-although important-generally pertain to the period immediately before and after the civil rights movement. Thus they do not provide any evidence pertaining to the wide temporal span that would be more appropriate information for a test of Wilson's view, which is about change across broad historical periods. Furthermore, although the above studies clearly estab- lish that class has become an important factor affecting the occupational attainment of black men, they do not attempt to address the somewhat more specific claim that class is actually more important than race per se.

METHODOLOGY

We estimate models of occupational attainment for white and black men using data that span the last two historical periods discussed by Wilson. The net effect of being African-American is then defined as the estimated racial difference in occupational attainment after controlling for productivity-related characteristics, which, in our data, include years of schooling, years of labor force experience, and region. We calculate the net effect of race for the industrial period and for the modern industrial period. In this way, our results directly address the hypothesis of the The Declining Significance of Race that the net effect of being African-American is substantially smaller in the modern industrial (i.e., post-civil rights) period than in the industrial (i.e., pre-civil rights) period.

As has already been discussed, Wilson also argues that in the modern industrial period class characteristics have become more important than racial effects in determining the socioeconomic attainments of African-American men. To investigate this issue, we compare the net effect of race with the net effect of class, which is operationalized in terms of educational attainment. This comparison of the size of the race effect vis-a-vis the size of the class effect provides additional insight into the declining significance of race, because we assess whether the relative importance of the racial effect has been reduced in the modern industrial period.

We emphasize that we are investigating only one aspect of racial inequality, namely, labor market rewards that are operationalized as broad groups of occu-




pational attainment. Additional studies of other indicators of labor market rewards-for example, detailed occupational categories, wages, job mobility, and unemployment-are needed in terms of current patterns as well as historical trends. More research would also be useful regarding racial inequality relating to what Wilson (1980:152) refers to as the "sociopolitical order," including such top- ics as educational inequality (e.g., Farkas and Vicknair 1996) and residential segre- gation (e.g., Farley et al. 1994).

Data

We use the 1940 and 1990 PUMS data sets. These data provide large, nationally representative samples of the occupational attainment of white and black men in all sectors of the labor force.2 We restrict the analyses to native-born, noninstitu- tionalized white and black men aged 25 to 64 who were not enrolled in school and who participated in the labor force at the time of the census.3 Because most women did not work in the paid labor market in 1940 (Bianchi and Spain 1986:141) and because Wilson's (1980) discussion of labor market trends focuses on men, we do not include women in our analyses. The 1940 PUMS provides systematic empirical evidence about the net racial disadvantage during the industrial period while the 1990 PUMS provides systematic empirical evidence about the net racial disadvantage during the modern industrial period.

A Three-Sector Occupational Classification

Because of the tremendous change in the occupational structure that occurred between 1940 and 1990 and because of major changes in the census classification of occupational categories during that period, we investigate a somewhat simpli- fied typology of occupational attainment. This classification consists of three broad sectors that are comparable across the two data sets and that represent-in both 1940 and 1990-three ordered levels of the socioeconomic hierarchy that is embedded in the occupational structure. We refer to our lowest occupational grouping as the low-wage sector, which we define as consisting of domestic service workers, other nonprotective service workers, farm laborers and foremen, and other laborers and agricultural workers. In short, the low-wage sector consists of lower manual occupations that tend to be the least socioeconomically rewarding in both 1940 and 1990.

We refer to the highest occupational grouping as the corporate sector, which we define as including (1) all professional and semiprofessional occupations and (2) nonfarm proprietors, managers, officials, clerical workers, and upper-level sales workers who are in core industries, where the latter refers to mining, construction, manufacturing, transportation, communications, public utilities, finance, insurance, real estate, professional services, and government or public administration. Thus the corporate sector refers to high-status professional and technical occupations as well as white-collar jobs in high-wage, core industries that tend to offer stabler employment and more advancement opportunities.

In this classification scheme, our middle-level occupational grouping refers to all of the gainfully employed who are in neither the corporate sector nor the low-




wage sector. We refer to this middle category as the working-class sector, and it consists of (1) farmers, farm managers, and farm tenants; (2) lower-level sales occupations; (3) upper-level manual occupations such as craftsmen and opera- tives; (4) protective service workers; and (5) white-collar workers in secondary industries, where the latter refers to agriculture, forestry, fisheries, wholesale and retail trade, business and repair services, personal services, and amuse- ment and recreation services. We assume that the socioeconomic rewards associated with employment in this working-class sector tend to be less than those associated with employment in the corporate sector but greater than those associated with employment in the low-wage sector.

Wilson's (1980) discussion of the occupational structure and of labor market sectors sometimes seems rather informal and roundabout, but our definition of the low-wage sector appears to correspond to his description of the nonunionized "casual, low-paid, and menial jobs of the low-wage sector" (106). Our definition of the corporate sector, however, is much narrower than Wilson's, because his definition includes unionized, higher-skilled, blue-collar workers who earn high wages and enjoy good benefits (98). We do not include these workers in our definition of the corporate sector, however, because our data lack information on union status, and we believe that attempting to include blue-collar occupations without this information would create a category that would no longer be unam- biguously higher status in terms of socioeconomic rewards. Thus, while our three-sector classification bears some resemblance to Wilson's discussion of labor market sectors, our primary concern is not to attempt to operationalize Wilson's descriptions per se but rather to create a scheme that more clearly represents an ordered hierarchy of the socioeconomic rewards associated with the job structure and that can be operationalized with the data that are available in the 1940 and 1990 PUMS.

Multinomial Logistic Regression

To analyze occupational attainment in terms of our three-category classification, we use the multinomial logistic regression model, which we estimated sepa- rately for white men and black men.4 Because the dependent variable consists of three categorical outcomes, two equations are estimated as one category used as the reference group. In our application, the low-wage sector is designated as the reference group. Let Yi = 0 for men whose socioeconomic attainment is in the low- wage sector; let Yi = 1 for men whose socioeconomic attainment is in the working- class sector; and let Yi = 2 for men whose socioeconomic attainment is in the corporate sector. For these latter two contrasts, let j = 1, 2, and we can then calculate their probabilities of socioeconomic attainment as

b'x.

Prob(Yi = j) = 1 + e ki

where b' refers to a vector of estimated coefficients for the jth contrast, and xi




refers to the corresponding vector of independent variables for the ith individual. The probability of being in the low-wage sector (i.e., the reference category) is

Prob(Yi = 0) = I J b'~x

k = I

The independent variables for the model using the 1940 PUMS include years of schooling, whether attended college (i.e., years of schooling is at least equal to 13), years of labor force experience, the square of years of labor force experience, whether resides in the Northeast region, and whether resides in the South region (where the reference category is the West and North Central regions). The independent variables for the model using the 1990 PUMS are exactly the same, except that an additional dichotomous variable is included to indicate whether the individual has a work disability.

RESULTS

Results from the 1940 PUMS

Table 1 shows descriptive statistics for the 1940 PUMS data. The sample size for white men is 225,724; the sample size for black men is 25,243. Among working- age black men in the labor force in 1940, the mean years of schooling completed is 5.4 while for whites it is 9.2. Only 3% of black men attended at least 13 years of schooling while for whites the corresponding figure is about 13%. Thus, in 1940 a large gap in educational attainment exists between white and black men.

There is little substantive difference between the two groups in terms of average years of labor force experience. As for region of residence, black men were much more likely to live in the South than were white men in 1940. The percentage of black men employed in the corporate sector is only 3.4% while the percent-

TABLE 1 Descriptive Statistics for Working-Age Men in 1940 PUMS

Blacks (N = 25,243) Whites (N = 225,724)

Standard Standard Mean Deviation Mean Deviation

Years of schooling 5.3652 3.4288 9.2084 3.3120 Attended college 0.0308 0.1730 0.1263 0.3322 Years of experience 25.7004 10.6777 24.6864 11.4196 Years of experience-squared 774.5232 603.3545 739.8293 619.4184 Resides in South 0.7477 0.4343 0.2819 0.4499 Resides in Northeast 0.1090 0.3117 0.2627 0.4401 Corporate sector occupation 0.0343 0.1820 0.1764 0.3812 Working-class sector occupation 0.4190 0.4934 0.6508 0.4767 Low-wage sector occupation 0.5467 0.4978 0.1728 0.3781




age employed in the working-class sector is 41.9%, and 54.7% are employed in the low-wage sector. The percentage of white men employed in the corporate sector is 17.6% while the percentage employed in the working-class sector is 65.1%, and only 17.3% are employed in the low-wage sector. Thus the racial differential in occupational attainment is very large in 1940.

The results from the maximum-likelihood estimation of the multinomial logit model for the 1940 PUMS are shown in Table 2. For whites, all of the coefficients are statistically significant at the .05 level in both the equation for the corporate sector and in the equation for the working-class sector. For blacks, all of the coefficients are also statistically significant at that level, with the exceptions of the effects of the square of years of experience in the corporate sector equation and of Northeast residence in the working-class sector.

For white as well as for African-American men, additional years of schooling increase the chances of employment in the corporate sector relative to employment in the low-wage sector. The racial difference in the effect of years of schooling is equal to about .15 and is statistically significant at the .05 level. A slightly larger racial difference is evident in the effect of years of schooling on the chances of employment in the working-class sector relative to employment in the low- wage sector. This latter racial difference is equal to about .18 and is also statistically significant at the .05 level.

TABLE 2 Results for Multinomial Logit Model of Sector Attainment in 1940

Blacks Whites

B B/SE(B) B B/SE(B)

Corporate Sector Intercept -7.0357 -23.6415 -7.3037 -104.041 Years of schooling 0.4231 25.0355 0.5758 136.123* Attended college 0.3486 4.6604 0.2102 10.155 Years of experience 0.0683 4.1145 0.1286 38.503* Years of experience-squared -0.0005 -1.7042 -0.0014 -23.770* (Resides in North Central/West) Resides in Northeast 0.2848 4.6997 0.2315 24.343 Resides in South 0.1908 3.7266 0.1982 19.243

Working-class sector Intercept -0.9930 -8.8582 -1.4550 -30.2495* Years of schooling 0.0143 2.9303 0.1939 74.8649* Attended college 0.1801 3.2805 0.1348 7.0947 Years of experience 0.0339 5.1598 0.0948 36.3218* Years of experience-squared -0.0002 -2.2609 -0.0012 -27.1739* (Resides in North Central/West) Resides in Northeast 0.0135 0.4839 0.0414 5.7660 Resides in South 0.3113 15.1854 0.2175 29.7945*

* Two-tailed t-test of the racial difference in the effects of the variable is statistically significant at the .05 level.




Probabilities of Sector Employment by Race in 1940

To ascertain more clearly the racial differences in occupational attainment as implied by the results for the multinomial logit model for 1940, we calculated the probabilities of employment for each of the three sectors for white and black men with various years of schooling. These predicted probabilities are shown in Table 3, and they assume that the individual has 25 years of labor force experience and resides in the North Central or West region. By definition, the sum of the probabilities of employment across the three sectors equals 1 (within rounding error). Equations 1 and 2 were used to compute the probabilities.

Table 3 indicates that for an African-American man with 3 years of schooling, the probability of employment is .0070 for the corporate sector; .4311 for the working- class sector; and .5619 for the low-wage sector. For a white man with 3 years of schooling, the corresponding probabilities are .0124, .6633, and .3243, respectively. Thus among men with 3 years of schooling, the effect of being African-American is equal to the racial difference between the coefficients corresponding to a particular contrast (as shown in column 4 of Table 3): -.0054 for the corporate sector; -.2322 for the working-class sector; and .2376 for the low-wage sector.

These results indicate that the disadvantage associated with being African- American-at least among men with 3 years of schooling-is very small in regard to corporate sector attainment. However, the .5o/o black disadvantage for corporate sector employment in part reflects a floor effect; the absolute difference between the probabilities of a black man and a white man being employed in the

TABLE 3 Predicted Probabilities from Multinomial Logistic Models of Sector Attainment in 1940

Blacks Whites Blacks Whites Racial Educational Educational

Years of Schooling Probability Probability Difference Difference Difference (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

Corporate sector 3 0.0070 0.0124 -0.0054 6 0.0239 0.0440 -0.0201 0.0169 0.0316

12 0.2298 0.3480 -0.1182 0.2059 0.3040 16 0.6713 0.7356 -0.0643 0.4415 0.3876

Working-class sector 3 0.4311 0.6633 -0.2322 6 0.4340 0.7508 -0.3168 0.0029 0.0875

12 0.3589 0.6007 -0.2418 -0.0751 -0.1501 16 0.1727 0.2556 -0.0829 -0.1862 -0.3451

Low-wage sector 3 0.5619 0.3243 0.2376 6 0.5420 0.2052 0.3368 -0.0199 -0.1191

12 0.4113 0.0513 0.3600 -0.1307 -0.1539 16 0.1561 0.0088 0.1473 -0.2552 -0.0425

Note: Calculations assume 25 years of experience and residence in the North Central or West region.




corporate sector is close to 0 simply because that sector rarely hires anyone with just 3 years of schooling. In contrast, the 23% black disadvantage among men with 3 years of schooling is quite substantial and suggests direct employment discrimination against African-American men.

The fact that black men are about 24% more likely to be employed in the low- wage sector derives from the foregoing probabilities that indicate that black men are less likely to be employed in the corporate and working-class sectors. In particular, note that .2376 = - 1(-.0054 + -.2322), because the low-wage sector is the reference category that employs the black men who were not employed in the corporate and working-class sectors. In other words, if blacks are less likely to be employed in the corporate and working-class sectors, then those probabilities tell us how much more likely blacks are to be employed in the low-wage sector because the typology is exhaustive by definition.

Column 4 of Table 3 also shows the other racial differences for each level of education and sector attainment. Among men with 12 years of schooling, blacks are 12% less likely to be employed in the corporate sector while among men with 16 years of schooling, blacks are 6% less likely to be employed in the corporate sector. In regard to working-class sector attainment, black men are substantially disadvantaged at every educational level: 23% among men with 3 years of schooling (as we have already noted); 32% among men with 6 years of schooling; 24% among men with 12 years of schooling; and 8% among men with 16 years of schooling. Because black men are less likely to have corporate sector or working- class sector employment, they are accordingly more likely to have low-wage employment. In particular, the racial effects for the low-wage sector are 24% among men with 3 years of schooling (as we have already noted); 34% among men with 6 years of schooling; 36% among men with 12 years of schooling; and 15% among men with 16 years of schooling.

The effects of educational attainment refer to the differences between the num- bers on the lines of a single column of probabilities (i.e., column 2 in the case of blacks and column 3 for whites). For black men, these effects are given in column 5 of Table 3. For example, the probability that a black man with 6 years of schooling is employed in the corporate sector is .0239 while the probability that a black man with 12 years of schooling is employed in the corporate sector is .2298. The difference of .2059 is shown in column 5 and represents the effect of an additional 6 years of schooling (i.e., the change from 6 to 12 years of schooling) for black men. Although only 1.5% of black men in 1940 had completed college (the frequency distribution for total years of schooling completed by black men is shown in Table 7, below), black men who did have 16 years of schooling apparently enjoyed a substantial increase in the chances of being employed in the corporate sector; the effect of 4 years of college education is shown in column 5 as being .4415.

Given that educational attainment constitutes a key class resource in the competition for higher socioeconomic rewards in the labor market, the foregoing results indicate that the class effects-as represented by high school and college graduation-are larger than the direct effect of racial discrimination in regard to obtaining corporate sector employment in 1940. That is, the effect of obtaining a




high school diploma or a college degree is larger than is the disadvantage of being black (at any educational level) at least in regard to corporate sector attainment. One should note, however, as is evident in Table 7, below, 93.40/o of black men in 1940 had less than a high school education, and about 67% of black men had 6 years of schooling or less. Thus, in regard to corporate sector attainment, class effects are larger than racial disadvantage but only for the small group of elite black men who had a high school or college diploma in 1940.

In regard to working-class sector attainment, however, racial disadvantage seems to be a much more clearly important factor at almost all the educational levels in 1940. The disadvantages of being black (as shown in column 4) are much larger in absolute value than are the educational effects for black men (as shown in column 5). For example, the return to 6 years of education (i.e., from 6th grade to 12th grade) is only a slight drop in the probability of working-class sector employment from .4340 to .3589. This gain of only .0751 is less than half of the gain experienced by comparable white men (i.e., .1501 in column 6). Although there is a moderate payoff to a college degree in terms of avoiding the working- class sector (i.e., .1862), it must be remembered that only 1.5% of black men had a college degree in 1940 (see Table 7, below). Thus for the vast majority of black men, the advantage brought about by completing an additional educational level is much less than the disadvantage of being black in 1940.

The relative importance of race versus educational attainment is also evident in the probabilities relating to employment in the low-wage sector. At all educational levels through high school graduation, the disadvantage of being black results in large probabilities of being employed in a low-wage occupation that are only slightly ameliorated by additional schooling. The only exception is that of a college degree, which reduces the chances of low-wage sector employment by .2552. As we have already noted, however, college degrees are restricted to a very small, elite group of black men in 1940.

Results from the 1990 PUMS

Table 4 shows descriptive statistics for the 1990 PUMS data. The sample size for white men is 14,640 while the sample size for black men is 36,125.5 The mean years of schooling completed by the two groups in 1990 is much less divergent than it was in 1940. Among working-age black men in the labor force in 1990, mean years of schooling is 12.1; for whites, it is 13.3. About 38% of black men had at least 13 years of schooling; for white men, the corresponding figure is about 52%. When compared to the educational statistics given in Table 1, considerable convergence is evident between the two races in regard to the years of schooling obtained in the five decades after 1940.

There is also less of a regional difference between the two groups in 1990. Black men in 1990 are still more likely to reside in the South than are white men, but the racial difference is not as large as it was in 1940. Little substantive difference exists between the two groups in terms of average years of labor force experience in 1990. As for the distribution of employment across the three occupational sectors, 34.30/o of white men are employed in the corporate sector (22.6% among black




TABLE 4 Descriptive Statistics for Working-Age Men in 1990 PUMS

Blacks (N = 36,125) Whites (N = 14,640)

Standard Standard Mean Deviation Mean Deviation

Years of schooling 12.0985 2.8350 13.2561 2.9849 Attended college 0.3795 0.4852 0.5239 0.4994 Years of experience 21.8258 11.0759 22.5966 11.3805 Years of experience-squared 599.0431 566.8006 640.1189 580.6070 Resides in South 0.5922 0.4914 0.3154 0.4647 Resides in Northeast 0.1309 0.3373 0.2168 0.4121 Work disability 0.0714 0.2575 0.0767 0.2662 Corporate sector occupation 0.2258 0.4181 0.3434 0.4748 Working-class sector occupation 0.5335 0.4989 0.5479 0.4977 Low-wage sector occupation 0.2407 0.4275 0.1087 0.3113

men); 54.8% of white men are employed in the working-class sector (53.4% among black men); and 10.9% of white men are employed in the low-wage sector (24.1% among black men). Relative to the distributions of sector employment for 1940, these distributions for 1990 indicate substantial convergence between white and black men.6

In general, the distributions of sector employment also indicate that between 1940 and 1990 the corporate sector expanded greatly. During this period, the proportion of white men employed in the corporate sector almost doubled while the proportion of black men employed in that sector increased sixfold. There was also a substantial drop in low-wage sector employment. The proportion of black men employed in the low-wage sector in 1990 is less than half of their proportion in 1940 while for white men the proportion employed in the low-wage sector in 1990 is only about two-thirds of that in 1940. In regard to the proportion employed in the working-class sector, for white men it declined slightly while for black men it increased slightly over this period.

The results from the maximum-likelihood estimation of the multinomial logit model for the 1990 PUMS are shown in Table 5. For whites, all of the coefficients are statistically significant at the .05 level in both equations, with the exception of residence in the Northeast (which is not significant in either equation) and the square of years of experience (which is not significant in the corporate sector equation). For blacks, all of the coefficients are statistically significant at the .05 level, with the exceptions of residence in the Northeast and in the South (both of which are not significant in the working-class equation).

For both white and black men, additional schooling increases the chances of employment in the corporate sector relative to employment in the low-wage sector, but the effect is slightly larger for white men. In particular, the racial difference in the effect of years of schooling is equal to about .09 and is statistically significant at the .05 level. This racial difference is smaller, however, than the cor-




TABLE 5 Results for Multinomial Logit Model of Sector Attainment in 1990

Blacks Whites

B B/SE(B) B B/SE(B)

Corporate sector Intercept -6.2008 -38.0885 -6.8373 -24.1430 Years of schooling 0.4336 40.1481 0.5248 28.5217* Attended college 0.5391 22.5565 0.4476 10.1267 Years of experience 0.0438 6.1952 0.0423 3.3840 Years of experience-squared -0.0003 -2.5175 -0.0001 -0.6584 (Resides in North Central/West) Resides in Northeast 0.0862 3.0786 0.0781 1.9428 Resides in South -0.1229 -6.2071 0.2274 6.0000* (No work disability) Work disability -0.1454 -4.3274 -0.2710 -4.8221

Working-class sector Intercept -0.6899 -6.7373 -0.0648 -0.2907* Years of schooling 0.0828 12.8571 0.0900 6.1643 Attended college 0.2269 12.3989 0.1292 3.4270* Years of experience 0.0402 7.5564 0.0436 4.0000 Years of experience-squared -0.0006 -6.1165 -0.0006 -3.2211 (Resides in North Central/West) Resides in Northeast -0.0164 -0.7069 -0.0072 -0.2071 Resides in South -0.0249 -1.5860 0.1936 5.8313* (No work disability) Work disability -0.1737 -7.2678 -0.2098 -4.7252


responding racial difference in 1940. As for racial difference in the effect of years of schooling on the chances of employment in the working-class sector relative to employment in the low-wage sector, it is not statistically significant at the .05 level in 1990. The racial difference in the effect of the nonlinearity for attending at least 1 year of college is statistically significant at the .05 level in the working- class sector equation, but in this case the coefficient is larger for black men than for white men.

Probabilities of Sector Employment by Race in 1990

Table 6 shows the predicted probabilities of employment for each of the three sectors for white and black men with various years of schooling. As was the case with the probabilities in Table 3 that were computed using the 1940 results, the probabilities in Table 6 using the 1990 multinomial logit model results also assume that the individual has 25 years of labor force experience and resides in the North Central or West region. The 1990 predicted probabilities further assume




TABLE 6 Predicted Probabilities from Multinomial Logistic Models of Sector Attainment in 1990


Years of Schooling Probability Probability Difference Difference Difference (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

Corporate sector 3 0.0081 0.0040 0.0041 6 0.0253 0.0155 0.0098 0.0172 0.0115

12 0.2011 0.1918 0.0093 0.1758 0.1763 16 0.6145 0.6641 -0.0496 0.4134 0.4723 18 0.7680 0.8275 -0.0595 0.1535 0.1634

Working-class sector 3 0.5380 0.7033 -0.1653 6 0.5878 0.7471 -0.1593 0.0498 0.0438

12 0.5704 0.6819 -0.1115 -0.0174 -0.0652 16 0.3136 0.3017 0.0119 -0.2568 -0.3802 18 0.1943 0.1576 0.0367 -0.1193 -0.1441

Low-wage sector 3 0.4540 0.2928 0.1612 6 0.3869 0.2374 0.1495 -0.0671 -0.0554

12 0.2285 0.1263 0.1022 -0.1584 -0.1111 16 0.0719 0.0343 0.0376 -0.1566 -0.0920 18 0.0377 0.0149 0.0228 -0.0342 -0.0194

Note: Calculations assume 25 years of experience, no work disability, and residence in the North Central or West region.

that the individual has no work disability. The same values on years of schooling that were used for the 1940 calculations are also used in the computations for the 1990 probabilities, except that we included the additional value of 18 (which is the value that we assigned to people who have a master's degree in the 1990 data).7

The racial effects for the 1990 results are given in column 4 of Table 6. For corporate sector attainment, the racial effects are generally small. The largest in absolute value is a 6% disadvantage for African-American men with a master's degree. The second largest in absolute value is a 5% disadvantage for African- American men with a college degree. At the other educational levels, the racial effects for the corporate sector are close to 0%.

The racial effects for working-class sector attainment in 1990, however, are slightly larger. Among men with 3 years of schooling, the racial disadvantage for black men is 17%. Among men with 6 years of schooling, the racial disadvantage for black men is 16%. While these effects are nontrivial in size, one should note that in 1990 only about 7% of black men had 6 or fewer years of schooling (see Table 7, below) while among white men the corresponding figure is about 4%. Thus these racial disadvantages are limited to a fairly restricted group.

The racial effect for working-class attainment in 1990 among men with a high




school diploma is a 11% disadvantage for African-Americans. This level of schooling is the modal category for black men in 1990. The 11% figure suggests a moderate degree of racial disadvantage. From the point of view of our research interest in Wilson's thesis of the declining significance of race, however, it should be pointed out that the racial disadvantages in obtaining working-class sector employment in 1940 were much larger. In 1940, among men with a high school diploma, the black disadvantage was 24% while among men with 6 years of schooling the black disadvantage was 32%, and among men with 3 years of schooling (which represented a substantial number of persons at that time) the black disadvantage was 23%. Therefore, while a moderate degree of racial disadvantage still exists for African-American men in working-class sector attainment in 1990, this degree of racial disadvantage is substantially smaller than the racial disadvantages of 1940.

In fact, if one systematically compares Table 3 with Table 6, one finds that at every educational level and for every sector of occupational attainment, the 1990 racial disadvantage is smaller than the corresponding 1940figure. Although Table 3 does not include any calculations based on 18 years of schooling, these probabilities in Table 6 using the 1990 results yield fairly small racial effects. In short, it seems rea- sonable to interpret the results in Tables 3 and 6 as indicating that a ubiquitous decline in racial effects occurred between 1940 and 1990.

From the point of view of our research interest in Wilson's thesis of the declining significance of race, we should also point out that the 1990 results in Table 6 indicate that the educational effects for black men are larger (in absolute value) than are their racial disadvantages. In other words, class effects among black men as measured by educational levels have become more significant than racial effects. For example, an increase from 6 years of schooling to a high school diploma raises the chances for corporate sector employment among black men by .1758 while a college degree increases those chances by .4134. These effects are clearly much larger than the racial disadvantage of .0595 for corporate sector attainment among men with a master's degree. In regard to working-class sector attainment, a college degree for an African-American man reduces those chances of employment by .2568 (because his chances of corporate sector employment are increased). This effect is larger than the racial disadvantage in working-class sector attainment at any educational level.

As for the probabilities relating to low-wage sector employment, an increase in schooling from 6 to 12 years reduces those chances by .1584 (because the chances for higher occupational attainment are improved). This educational effect is larger in absolute value than the racial disadvantages for low-wage sector attainment at 6 or 12 years of schooling. The racial disadvantage for low-wage sector attainment at 3 years of schooling-which we have noted refers to a fairly restricted group in 1990-is not smaller than the educational effect deriving from an increase in schooling from 6 to 12 years. However, the educational effect deriving from an increase in schooling from 3 to 12 years is .0671 + .1584 = .2255, which is clearly larger than the racial disadvantage for low-wage sector attainment at 3 years of schooling. Furthermore, there is also a substantial effect of a college degree for black men in avoiding low-sector employment. Thus we argue that the results in Table 6




also show that class effects as represented by educational attainment are more significant than racial effects in regard to low-wage sector attainment.

Comparing the Effects of Class for Black Men in 1940 versus 1990

As shown in Table 3, the probability that a white man with a high school diploma is employed in the low-wage sector is .0513 in 1940. In 1990, however, as shown in Table 6, the probability that a white man with a high school diploma is employed in the low-wage sector is .1263. Thus white men with a high school diploma are more than twice as likely to be employed in the lowest occupational sector in 1990 as they are in 1940. This result occurred despite the fact-as we have already seen in our discussion of the descriptive statistics-that the overall proportion of white men employed in the low-wage sector was substantially reduced over this period.

This result suggests that relative educational attainment is an important class resource in the competition for higher socioeconomic attainment in the labor market. Men who are employed in the low-wage sector tend to be those whose relative educational attainment is the lowest in the distribution of schooling regardless of what their absolute level of educational attainment may be. In 1940 white men with a high school diploma are approximately at the 87th percentile ranking in the distribution of schooling among white men, but in 1990 they are approximately at only the 48th percentile ranking. Thus the competitive advantage pro- vided by a high school degree was significantly reduced during this period, and therefore the effect of a high school diploma in avoiding low-wage sector employment declined substantially among white men between 1940 and 1990 despite the substantial reduction in the relative size of that sector. This general explanation seems consistent with Wilson's (1980:104) remarks regarding the increase in average years of schooling completed among black workers in the low-wage sector.

While the low-wage sector tends to employ men whose relative rank in the distribution of schooling is the lowest, the corporate sector tends to employ men whose relative rank in the distribution of schooling is the highest. In 1940 a white man with a high school diploma has a .3480 chance of being employed in the corporate sector while in 1990 a white man with a high school diploma has a .1918 chance of being employed in the corporate sector despite the fact that the relative size of corporate sector employment among white men almost doubled by this time. Thus the value of a high school diploma in obtaining a higher-status job declined over this period because the relative educational rank associated with a high school diploma was eroded from the 87th percentile to the 48th percentile between 1940 and 1990.

These results are consistent with previous sociological research that interprets at least part of the effect of schooling on socioeconomic attainment as deriving from a credential or screening effect that creates a queuing process in the matching of workers to jobs in the labor market (Sakamoto and Chen 1991). Workers with the highest level of educational attainment form a queue for high-status employment, and after those jobs are filled, the remaining workers with lower edu-




cational attainment obtain employment in the lower-status sectors. The basic theoretical rationale for this queuing model derives from earlier work on internal labor markets that emphasizes the socially structured nature of labor market processes (e.g., Doeringer and Piore 1971; Granovetter 1981) and that also argues that relative educational attainment is more important for obtaining higher-status jobs (Saka- moto and Powers 1995:229; Sorensen and Kalleberg 1981:69; Thurow 1975:95-96).

To compare the effect of educational attainment on socioeconomic attainment across different time periods, relative educational attainment is therefore a better metric to use when the average for the distribution of years of schooling changed significantly during the time period. In Table 7, the percentile rank associated

TABLE 7 Frequency Distribution for Years of Schooling in 1940 and 1990 PUMS for Black Men

Years of Schooling Frequency Percent Cumulative Percent

1940 (N = 25,243) 0 2195 8.7 8.7 1 801 3.2 11.9 2 1853 7.3 19.2 3 2661 10.5 29.8 4 3704 14.7 44.4 5 2950 11.7 56.1 6 2711 10.7 66.9 7 2056 8.1 75.0 8 2784 11.0 86.0 9 848 3.4 89.4

10 652 2.6 92.0 11 372 1.5 93.4 12 876 3.5 96.9 13 136 0.5 97.4 14 201 0.8 98.2 15 75 0.3 98.5 16 271 1.1 99.6 17 97 0.4 100.0

1990 (N = 36,125) 0 308 0.9 0.9 2.5 396 1.1 1.9 6.5 1935 5.4 7.3 9 1214 3.4 10.7

10 1987 5.5 16.2 11 2220 6.1 22.3 11.5 2274 6.3 28.6 12 12079 33.4 62.0 13 7448 20.6 82.7 14 1922 5.3 88.0 16 2965 8.2 96.2 18 971 2.7 98.9 21 406 1.1 100.0




with 6 years of schooling is given to be about 67th for black men in 1940 while the percentile rank associated with 12 years of schooling is shown to be about 97th in 1940. Table 7 also shows that for black men in 1990 the percentile rank associated with 12 years of schooling is 62d while the percentile rank associated with 16 years of schooling is about 96th. Thus, if we wish to use educational attainment as an indicator of a key class resource in the competition for higher-status jobs and if we wish to compare its effects between 1940 and 1990 for black men, then an approximately accurate comparison would be to compare the increase in the probabilities from 6 to 12 years of schooling in 1940 to the increase in the probabilities from 12 to 16 years of schooling in 1990.

Column 5 of Table 3 indicates that for black men in 1940 the chances for corporate sector employment increase by .2059 as educational attainment increases from 6 to 12 years of schooling. For black men in 1990, however, column 5 of Table 6 indicates that the chances for corporate sector employment increase by .4134 as educational attainment increases from 12 to 16 years of schooling. Thus, in regard to coporate sector attainment, the effect of relative educational attainment among black men increased significantly-it more than doubled-between 1940 and 1990.

Column 5 of Table 3 also indicates that for black men in 1940 the chances for working-class sector employment decrease by .0751 as educational attainment increases from 6 to 12 years of schooling. But for black in 1990, column 5 of Table 6 indicates that the chances for working-class sector employment decrease by .2568 as educational attainment increases from 12 to 16 years of schooling. Therefore, in regard to working-class sector attainment, the effect of relative educational attainment among black men increased significantly-it more than tripled-between 1940 and 1990.8

CONCLUSIONS

Using Wilson's (1980) thesis of the declining significance of race as our theoretical context, we use a three-sector typology to investigate occupational attainment among white and black men in the 1940 and 1990 PUMS. The results indicate that the net disadvantage of being black is substantially greater in the industrial period than in the modern industrial period. That is, after controlling for schooling, labor force experience, and region, the effect of race is smaller in 1990 than in 1940 for every level of education and sector attainment that we investigate. Fur- thermore, a comparison of the effects of education with those for being black indicates that for the vast majority of black men in 1940 the racial disadvantage is greater in absolute value than are the educational effects; racial status is generally more important than class status in determining occupational attainment among black men in 1940 during the industrial period. In 1990, however, the effects of education are much larger than the effects of being black; class status is clearly more important than racial status in determining occupational attainment among black men in 1990 during the modern industrial period. Finally, a comparison of the effects of class-in terms of relative educational attainment-indicates that they substantially increased over this time span for black men. These results sup-




port Wilson's thesis of the declining significance of race, and they are consistent with his claim that in the modern industrial period after the civil rights movement, "economic class position [is] more important than race in determining black chances for occupational mobility" (Wilson 1980:23).

Acknowledgments: We thank the Population Research Center of the University of Texas for providing computer services. All opinions expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the authors.

APPENDIX

In this Appendix we report the results for a similar analysis using the 1950 PUMS. Using these data, we replicated the variable definitions and model specification that we used with the 1940 PUMS. The purpose of this part of the analysis is to provide additional information about the trend in the net effect of being African- American on occupational attainment. This information may be beneficial because the occupational data in the 1950 PUMS have not been previously investi- gated in the context of Wilson's hypothesis of the declining significance of race.

As we noted earlier, Wilson (1980:3) states that "stage three is associated with the modern, industrial, post-World War II era, which really began to crystallize during the 1960s and 1970s, and may be characterized as the period of progressive transition from racial inequalities to class inequalities" (emphasis in original). Because the 1950 PUMS data were collected during the post-World War II era but before the passage of the major civil rights legislation of the 1960s, we expect these data to reflect a transitional phase in which the net racial effects are smaller than those in 1940 but larger than those in 1990. This expectation seems consistent with Wilson's (1980:88-121) historical discussion of the various technological, economic, and political factors that are involved in the grad- ual social change that he characterizes as the "progressive transition from racial inequalities to class inequalities."

Appendix Table 1 shows the results for the estimation of the multinomial logistic regression model while the subsequent predicted probabilities are shown in Appendix Table 2. Appendix Table 2 follows the same format as Table 3, except that instead of calculating the predicted probabilities at 3, 6, 12, and 16 years of schooling, we calculate them for 3, 7, 13, and 16 years of schooling for the 1950 data. Because of the increase in the average level of schooling among black workers between 1940 and 1950, the percentile ranking for 6 years of schooling in 1940 is approximately equal to the percentile ranking for 7 years of schooling in 1950 (and 12 years of schooling in 1990) while the percentile ranking for 12 years of schooling in 1940 is approximately equal to the percentile ranking for 13 years of schooling in 1950 (and 16 years of schooling in 1990).

As for corporate sector attainment, Appendix Table 2 shows that among men with 12 years of schooling in 1940 the racial differential in the predicted probability is .1182. Among men with 13 years of schooling in 1950 the racial differential in the predicted probability is .1098. In 1990, among men with 16 years of schooling the racial differential in the predicted probability is .0496. Thus, among men at




APPENDIX TABLE 1 Results for Multinomial Logit Model of Sector Attainment in 1950

Blacks Whites

B B/Se(B) B B/Se(B)

Corporate sector Intercept -1.8192 -3.8665 -1.5286 -7.5115 Years of schooling 0.2098 8.3920 0.3528 31.5000* Attended college 0.5095 4.2493 0.3164 5.8701 Years of experience -0.0335 -1.2737 0.0012 0.1154 Years of experience-squared 0.0005 1.1152 0.0000 0.1844

(Resides in North Central/West) Resides in Northeast 0.1490 1.8417 -0.0393 -1.4449* Resides in South 0.0611 0.8642 0.1849 5.7962

Working-class sector Intercept 3.8446 13.4521 3.7742 20.1506 Years of schooling -0.1488 -11.9040 0.0038 0.3892* Attended college 0.2811 2.8026 0.0642 1.2205 Years of experience -0.0370 -2.2424 -0.0046 -0.4711 Years of experience-squared 0.0001 0.5140 -0.0003 -2.0238

(Resides in North Central/West) Resides in Northeast -0.0785 -1.5213 -0.1773 -6.9529 Resides in South 0.1798 4.3535 0.1451 4.8367


about the 96th percentile in the distribution of schooling, the net disadvantage of being African-American declined over this period. As expected, the size of the net racial effect for 1950 is between those for 1940 and 1990. However, the size of the 1950 figure is closer to the size of the 1940 figure.

As for low-wage sector attainment, among men with 12 years of schooling in 1940 the racial differential in the predicted probability is .3600, which is extremely large. The figure is substantially reduced in 1950 for men with 13 years of schooling among whom the racial differential in the predicted probability is .1237. In 1990, among men with 16 years of schooling the racial differential in the predicted probability is further reduced to .0376. This pattern is consistent with the expectation of a gradually declining significance of race.

Among men at approximately the 65th percentile in the distribution of educational attainment, however, the pattern for low-wage sector attainment is less clearly monotonic across these decades. Among men with 6 years of schooling in 1940 the racial differential in the predicted probability is .3368, and among men with 7 years of schooling in 1950 the racial differential in the predicted probability is .0921. In 1990, however, the racial differential is .1022 among men with 12 years of schooling. Although the 1950 figure is clearly lower than the 1940 figure, the 1950 figure is actually slightly higher than the 1990 figure. Thus, for men at approximately the 65th percentile in the distribution of educational attainment,




APPENDIX TABLE 2 Predicted Probabilities from Multinomial Logistic Models of Sector Attainment in 1950


Years of schooling Probability Probability Difference Difference Difference (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

Corporate sector 3 0.0130 0.0188 -0.0058 7 0.0497 0.0719 -0.0222 0.0367 0.0531

13 0.3382 0.4480 -0.1098 0.2885 0.3761 16 0.5728 0.6982 -0.1254 0.2346 0.2502

Working-class sector 3 0.9145 0.9519 -0.0374 7 0.8309 0.9008 -0.0699 -0.0836 -0.0511

13 0.5231 0.5370 -0.0139 -0.3078 -0.3638 16 0.3021 0.2937 0.0084 -0.2210 -0.2433

Low-wage sector 3 0.0724 0.0292 0.0432 7 0.1193 0.0272 0.0921 0.0469 -0.0020

13 0.1385 0.0148 0.1237 0.0192 -0.0124 16 0.1250 0.0080 0.1170 -0.0135 -0.0068

Note: Calculations assume 25 years of experience and residence in the North Central or West region.

the broad contrast across the entire fifty-year period does indicate a clear decline in the net effect of race in low-wage sector attainment, but the pattern is not strictly monotonic.

In sum, these results provide partial but not complete support for the hypothesis that the 1950 data reflect a transitional phase in which the net effect of race is in between those for 1940 and 1990. The hypothesis seems to be most appropriate for men with high levels of education. Among men with more average levels of education, however, the results not appear to be strictly monotonic across these three decades. This issue of tracing out the trend in the net effect of being African- American might be a fruitful subject for future research in which a more refined measure of occupational attainment would be useful.

NOTES

1. A declining significance of race is also predicted by Becker's (1957) neoclassical economic theory of discrimination as well as by Parsons's (1960) theory of moderniza- tion. The former view is not popular in sociology due to its dubious assumption of a perfectly competitive labor market; the latter theory has lost favor because its func- tionalist perspective ignores the role of social conflict in generating inequality (e.g., Tumin 1953).

2. Smith and Welch (1989) investigate the wage and salary data in the 1940 PUMS, but they are not representative of the entire labor force because self-employment incomes are not available in the 1940 PUMS.




3. For convenience we refer to our nonblack sample as white men, but we deleted whites who were identified as being Hispanic. Therefore, our nonblack sample actually refers to non-Hispanic white men.

4. Although the three categories of our dependent variable are assumed to be ordered, we do not use the ordered logit or the ordered probit model because our research interests require the precision of allowing the effects of the independent variables to be nonpro- portional across contrasts.

5. We extracted all records of black men from the 1% 1990 PUMS, but we randomly sam- pled white men.

6. The index of dissimilarity for the race-specific distributions of sector employment in 1940 is 37.39, whereas in 1990 it is only 13.15.

7. The highest value for the schooling data in the 1940 PUMS is 17 years. 8. The decrease in the probability of low-wage sector employment brought about by an

increase in schooling from 6 to 12 years in 1940 among black men is only slightly smaller in absolute value than the decrease in the probability of low-wage sector employment brought about by an increase in schooling from 12 to 16 years in 1990 (i.e., 13% vs. 16%, respectively). This period change is less substantial than the period changes for the other two sectors because of a floor effect; very few college graduates are employed in the low-wage sector in 1990. Thus the low-wage sector is not the most appropriate level of socioeconomic attainment for the comparison of the effects of the increase in relative educational attainment from the 62d percentile rank to the 96th percentile rank.

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