TY  - JOUR
AU  - Bound,John
AU  - Freeman,Richard B.
TI  - What Went Wrong? The Erosion of Relative Earnings and Employment Among  Young Black Men in the 1980s
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 3778
PY  - 1991
Y2  - July 1991
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3778
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3778.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
John Bound
Department of Economics
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1220
Tel: 734/998-7149
Fax: 734/998-7415
E-Mail: jbound@umich.edu

Richard B. Freeman
NBER
1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA  02138
Tel: 617/868-3900
Fax: 617/868-2742
E-Mail: freeman@nber.org
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 1991-10-01
AB  - This paper shows a widening in black-white earnings and employment gaps among young men from the mid-l970s through the 1980s that differs among subgroups. Earnings gaps increased most among college graduates and in the midwest while gaps in employment-population rates grew most among high school dropouts. We attribute the differential widening to distinct shifts in demand for subgroups due to changes in industry and regional employment, the falling real minimum wage and deunionisation, the growth of the relative supply of black to white workers that was marked among college graduates, and to increased crime, that was marked among high school dropouts. The differential factors affecting the groups highlights the economic diversity of black Americans.
ER  -