Racial and Spatial Influences on the Labor Market Opportunities of Low Skilled Workers

North Carolina State University, Raleigh NC

Investigators

Abstract

SES-0112267 Melvin Thomas Donald Tomaskovic-Devey North Carolina State University The PIs will study variation in the career patterns of a late 1970s cohort of low skilled workers by examining the impact of ethnicity and locality on these workers' careers. The PI will focus on spatial variation in income inequality, local demand for labor overall and low skill labor in particular, and local variation in race/ethnic inequality to explain the career dynamics of low skill workers. A prominent explanation for rising race/ethnic inequality is the spatial mismatch hypothesis that points toward the spatial location of African Americans and whites relative to the location and skill requirements of available jobs. There are also well documented spatial variations in the degree of race/ethnic competition, segregation, and discrimination. Therefore, it is expected that the prospects of low skilled workers are strongly tied to both their race/ethnicity and their opportunities in local labor markets. The investigators will develop a model of career inequality, which focuses on the endogenous creation of human capital disparities across the career. How do local labor market opportunities and local race/ethnic inequality shape the cumulative labor market experiences and earnings of low skilled workers? The investigators will develop tentative answers to this question using the National Longitudinal Survey - Youth Sample. The analytic strategy is to use three-level hierarchical linear models. In these models person-year outcomes and human capital attributes are at level one, fixed individual characteristics such as race, ethnicity, or gender are at level two, and characteristics of the local labor market are at level three. The research seeks to make two two key scientific advances. The first is the explicit conceptualization of human capital acquisition as endogenous to the labor market and so consistent with contextualized accounts of labor market opportunity and discrimination. The second is the implementation of a statistical framework, which assumes that the context of decisions and behaviors is important, and that fixed individual attributes and attributes of localities are the interactional context of human capital acquisition and returns.