A rich literature in intergenerational income mobility: The tendency for a person’s economic status to change relative to their parents’. shows that Black men experience less upward income mobility: The tendency to earn more than one’s parents.   (and more downward income mobility: The tendency to earn less than one’s parents. ) than White men. In other words, even when their parents have similar earnings, Black men often grow up to earn less than their White peers. In this paper, the authors study whether a similar dynamic holds for jobs, analyzing how parental occupations affect the occupational outcomes of subsequent generations. 

The authors combine historical censuses from 1850 through 1940 with contemporary surveys to model the likelihood that men born in the following six birth cohorts move from one occupation to another: those born between 1860 and 1870; 1880-1890; 1900-1910; 1920-1930; 1940-1950; and finally, 1960-1970. Their analysis reveals the following:

  • The occupational mobility: The tendency for a person’s job position to change relative to their parents’. experienced by Black men born between 1940 and 1950, who came of age during the Civil Rights Movement, played an outsized role in narrowing the job disparities between Black and White men and in shaping today’s job distribution. In particular, Black men from this birth cohort made significant progress at improving their job positions, moving from lower-skill jobs like laborers to higher-skill roles such as managers and officials. 
  • Unfortunately, these improvements did not continue at the same pace in later generations. While gaps have narrowed, Black men still tend to hold lower-skilled jobs and experience poorer job trajectories compared to White men today. 
  • Black men are more likely to hold jobs that are similar to those of their fathers and grandfathers. This tendency to maintain one’s occupational status across generations, which the authors refer to as “memory,” fades at a slower rate for Black men than it does for White men and makes racial occupational segregation more persistent. In addition, Black families at the top and bottom of the occupational hierarchy exhibit stronger memory in their occupational mobility than families in the middle.
  • For both Black and White men, occupational mobility appears to be more driven by individual efforts, like education and skills, than structural effects related to the broader economy and job market. In other words, exchange mobility: Changes in an individual’s income or occupational status due to personal advancements or setbacks, while the overall distribution of income and occupational roles remains unchanged. appears more important than structural mobility: Changes in an individual’s income or occupational status due to broad economic or societal shifts that affect large segments of the population. . For Black men born between 1940 and 1950, structural mobility is relatively high compared to White men, while exchange mobility is low. This finding aligns with the significant impact of the Civil Rights Movement on opportunities available to Black Americans, while also highlighting the importance of anti-discrimination policies in addressing the unequal opportunities that Black Americans encounter in achieving occupational statuses through personal effort and qualifications. 

This research underscores the persistent challenges Black Americans face in achieving upward mobility and highlights the crucial need to address historical legacies and barriers to mobility to foster greater equity in opportunity. While prior work has documented gaps in income mobility between Black and White Americans, this research shows that at least part of these gaps is attributable to the groups’ unequal employment trajectories across generations.  Such insights are instrumental for policymakers in crafting targeted interventions aimed at reducing the disparities between Black and White Americans.