TY  - JOUR
AU  - Collins, William J
AU  - Wanamaker, Marianne H
TI  - Selection and Economic Gains in the Great Migration of African Americans: New Evidence from Linked Census Data
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 19124
PY  - 2013
Y2  - June 2013
DO  - 10.3386/w19124
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w19124
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w19124.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
William J. Collins
Department of Economics
Vanderbilt University
VU Station B #351819
2301 Vanderbilt Place
Nashville, TN 37235-1819
Tel: 615/322-3428
Fax: NA
E-Mail: william.collins@vanderbilt.edu

Marianne H. Wanamaker
Department of Economics
University of Tennessee
524 Stokely Management Center
Knoxville, TN 37996
Tel: 865/974-1700
E-Mail: wanamaker@utk.edu
AB  - The onset of World War I spurred the "Great Migration" of African Americans from the U.S. South, arguably the most important internal migration in U.S. history. We create a new panel dataset of more than 5,000 men matched from the 1910 to 1930 census manuscripts to address three interconnected questions: To what extent was there selection into migration? How large were the migrants' gains? Did migration narrow the racial gap in economic status? We find evidence of positive selection, but the migrants' gains were large. A substantial amount of black-white convergence in this period is attributable to migration.
ER  -