Blacks, Whites, and "Brown": Effects on the Earnings of Men and Their Sons

By combining difference estimators that capture racial and regional variation with intergenerational linkages in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we calculate the effects of Brown v. Board of Education on earnings across two generations of men. The longer a black man was exposed to post-Brown primary and secondary schools, the higher his earnings. Brown especially affected black men living in states that showed greater openness to later desegregation efforts. We speculate that these positive earnings effects reflect a hope for future change, both in schools and the workplace, which provided greater incentive to acquire human capital. We find weak evidence that Brown also increased earnings for a second generation of black men. This may indicate relaxed credit constraints due to larger earnings for the first generation. Although workplace-reform legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 certainly affected black earnings, particularly in the South, the evidence presented here suggests that Brown itself mattered as well.