1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910148638703321

Autore

Boustan Leah Platt

Titolo

Competition in the Promised Land : Black Migrants in Northern Cities and Labor Markets / / Leah Platt Boustan

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Princeton, NJ : , : Princeton University Press, , [2016]

©2017

ISBN

0-691-20249-4

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (217 pages)

Collana

National Bureau of Economic Research Publications

Classificazione

BUS023000BUS038000BUS092000HIS036060HIS054000

Disciplina

305.896073

Soggetti

HISTORY / Social History

HISTORY / United States / 20th Century

BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Development / General

BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Labor

BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Economic History

African Americans - Social conditions - 20th century

African Americans - Economic conditions - 20th century

Rural-urban migration - United States - History - 20th century

Migration, Internal - United States - History - 20th century

African Americans - Migrations - History - 20th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Previously issued in print: 2016.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Chapter 1: Black Migration from the South in Historical Context -- Chapter 2: Who Left the South and How Did They Fare? -- Chapter 3: Competition in Northern Labor Markets -- Chapter 4: Black Migration, White Flight -- Chapter 5: Motivations for White Flight: The Role of Fiscal/Political Interactions -- Epilogue: Black Migration, Northern Cities, and Labor Markets after 1970 -- References -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

From 1940 to 1970, nearly four million black migrants left the American rural South to settle in the industrial cities of the North and West. Competition in the Promised Land provides a comprehensive account of the long-lasting effects of the influx of black workers on labor markets and urban space in receiving areas.Traditionally, the



Great Black Migration has been lauded as a path to general black economic progress. Leah Boustan challenges this view, arguing instead that the migration produced winners and losers within the black community. Boustan shows that migrants themselves gained tremendously, more than doubling their earnings by moving North. But these new arrivals competed with existing black workers, limiting black-white wage convergence in Northern labor markets and slowing black economic growth. Furthermore, many white households responded to the black migration by relocating to the suburbs. White flight was motivated not only by neighborhood racial change but also by the desire on the part of white residents to avoid participating in the local public services and fiscal obligations of increasingly diverse cities.Employing historical census data and state-of-the-art econometric methods, Competition in the Promised Land revises our understanding of the Great Black Migration and its role in the transformation of American society.