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Immigration and wages: new evidence from the African American Great Migration

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  • John Gardner

    (University of Mississippi)

Abstract

During the African American Great Migration, millions of blacks left the Southern USA in favor of cities in the North. Despite the social and economic consequences of this migration, the question of its impacts on labor markets in the North has largely been overlooked in the literature. In this paper, I use both local wage comparisons and structural simulations of the aggregate Northern labor market to provide new evidence on the effects of the Great Migration on wages in the North, redoubling the evidence that it caused large declines in wages for blacks, with little effect for whites. The agreement between my local and aggregate wage effect estimates has implications for our general understanding of how immigration and wages are related and how that relationship can be measured.

Suggested Citation

  • John Gardner, 2016. "Immigration and wages: new evidence from the African American Great Migration," IZA Journal of Migration and Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 5(1), pages 1-45, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:izamig:v:5:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1186_s40176-016-0070-2
    DOI: 10.1186/s40176-016-0070-2
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Collins, William J., 2021. "The Great Migration of Black Americans from the US South: A guide and interpretation," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    2. Rashad Mohammed Moqbel Al Areqih, 2022. "Search for Ancestral Roots in Morgan Jerkins’s Wandering in Strange Lands," World Journal of English Language, Sciedu Press, vol. 12(1), pages 154-154, December.
    3. John Gardner, 2020. "Intergenerational altruism in the migration decision calculus: evidence from the African American Great Migration," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 33(1), pages 115-154, January.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Migration; Immigration; Internal migration; Great Migration; Local labor markets; National labor market; Wages; Spatial arbitrage;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population
    • N32 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-
    • N92 - Economic History - - Regional and Urban History - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-

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