The Political Economy and Impact of Race-Specific Policy, 1940-1970

National Bureau Of Economic Research Inc, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

This project widens the scope of inquiry into twentieth century African-American economic progress by examining the political economy that underpinned the adoption of a variety of race-related policies and then by measuring the impact of those policies. The investigation focuses on the 1940 to 1970 period when anti-discrimination legislation pertaining to labor and housing markets was debated and enacted at municipal, state, and federal levels of government. To this point in time, the economics literature has focused primarily on assessing the impact of the federal legislation. Consequently, economists' understanding of the emergence of race-specific policies is empirically weak; the effects of sub-federal legislation remain under-explored; and the connections between African-American mobility, political participation, and economic status remain dimly lit. Thus, economists and policymakers have an incomplete picture of how and how much government policy has contributed to the economic status of African-Americans. The project begins by exploring empirically the economic, political, and social forces that combined to promote anti-discrimination policies. This is accomplished by exploiting variation across states and cities in the timing of policy adoption, by assembling detailed studies of the internal political economy of particular states, and by identifying potential interactions across localities and across layers of government (municipal, state, and federal). The project then integrates consideration of the policies' origins with evaluations of the policies' impacts on labor and housing markets. Again, variation across locations in the timing of policy change provides a useful basis for the measurement of policy impact. Ultimately, the project seeks to achieve a more complete and more coherent assessment of the connections between government policy and African-American economic progress in the twentieth century.