Race and Schooling in the South, 1880-1950: An Economic History.

• Author: Milkman, Martin

By Robert A. Margo. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1990. Pp. x, 164. $24.95.

This book provides an examination of the interrelationships between race, schooling, and labor market outcomes in the South from the postbellum period through the early 1950s. These relationships have been examined by other researchers, and two identifiable groups of researchers have emerged. One group concludes that the vintage schooling hypothesis explains these interrelationships. The hypothesis, based on a human capital model of labor markets, states that racial differences in both the quality and quality of education are the major cause of the racial differences in labor market outcomes. A second group of researchers, classified by Margo as institutionalists, concludes that even if these differences in the quality and quality of education has not existed, a substantial differences in the black-white earnings ratio would still have existed. In this book, Margo uses a variety of basic econometric techniques and previously unexploited data sources to demonstrate that a model based on "an eclectic synthesis" of these two views combined with a factor which Margo calls "intergenerational drag" provides a better explanation of the interrelationships between race, schooling, and labor market outcomes than either the vintage schooling hypothesis or the institutionalist model.

Aside from the first chapter, which provides an introduction and overview, and the last chapter, which summarizes the findings of Margo's research, each of the chapters can be read independently and are accessible to advance undergraduates with limited exposure to econometrics. Chapter 2 provides a review of the racial differences in the rates of illiteracy, school attendance, schooling completed, and the racial division of public school expenditures in the South. While the reader is left with a comprehensive picture of tremendous racial differences that existed in the South, these racial differences are not contrasted with the racial differences that existed in other areas of the county. Margo demonstrates that "although racial differences in literacy and school attendance decreased in successive cohorts, the racial gap remained persistently large" and that "successive cohorts of black children were educated in better and better schools." However, this was also true for the cohorts of white children and the net result is a U-shaped pattern of the racial differences in the...