Race and Poverty: A Forty-Year Record.

The article uses two data sets- the 1940 and 1950 census files- in combination with the three subsequent census files to describe long-run trends in black poverty. The paper described a forty-year record of progress in reducing black poverty. The optimism that should have resulted from that progress was tempered by three other events of the 1970's: the accelerating breakup of the black family, the growing numbers of black men with little contact with the labor market, and a continued slowdown in economic growth. As a result, we have entered a new racial era in the U.S., in which black labor market progress no longer guarantees improvements in economic welfare, especially for the black underclass. Trends in labor market wages of black men and women represent only a first step in understanding the changes in black poverty that have taken place. The paper concludes with an examination of the downside of black economic progress-the in- creasing disengagement of many black men from the labor market.