Fertility Decline in the Civil Rights Era / Owen Thompson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Thompson, Owen.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w26047.

NBER working paper series no. w26047

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2019.

Summary:

Large black-white fertility differences are a key feature of US demography, and are closely related to the broader dynamics of US racial inequality. To better understand the origins and determinants of racial fertility differentials, this paper examines fertility patterns in the period surrounding passage and implementation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which precipitated a period of rapid socioeconomic and political progress among African Americans, with these gains strongly concentrated in the South. I first show that the relative fertility of southern black women precipitously declined immediately after 1964. Specifically, as of 1964 the general fertility rate of southern black women was 53 births greater than the general fertility rate of southern white women, but by 1969 this gap had fallen to 33 births, a decline of approximately 40% in five years. The black-white fertility gap outside of the South was unchanged over this period. Measures of completed childbearing similarly show rapid black-white fertility convergence in the South but not in the North. An analysis of potential mechanisms finds that a substantial share of the observed fertility convergence can be explained by relative improvements in the earnings of southern blacks, and that the historical intensity of slavery and lynching activity are the strongest spacial correlates of fertility convergence

Notes:

Print version record

July 2019.