Demographic change and entrepreneurial occupation: African Americans in Northern Cities

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, April, 1996 by Robert L. Boyd

Table 3 displays the R indexes for African Americans and foreign-born whites in undertaking. The data are incomplete, but there is enough information to make several observations. First, the representation of African Americans in undertaking increased during the study period. The R indexes for 1900 indicate that, with the exception of Pittsburgh (R = 1.16), African Americans were underrepresented in undertaking in the cities for which data are available. The R indexes for 1930, however, indicate that, with the exception of Newark (R = 0.98), African Americans were overrepresented in undertaking. Their representation was highest in St. Louis (R = 1.85), where the number of African American undertakers in 1930 was 85 percent greater than the number that one might expect based upon the proportion of African Americans in the city's workforce.

These results are in accord with the proposition derived from Lieberson's model. Increases in the African American population (Table 1), and the deterioration of race relations, were expected to lead to increases in the concentration of African Americans in occupations that serve a protected market of other African Americans. Further, in the cities for which the data are complete (New York, Chicago, Philadelphia), Table 3 shows that the trend in undertaking for African Americans sharply contrasts with the trend for foreign-born whites. The representation of African Americans increased in these cities during 1900-1930, and by 1930 African Americans were overrepresented in this entrepreneurial occupation.

Conversely, the representation of foreign-born whites in undertaking declined between 1900 and 1930, and during the study period, they were underrepresented in this entrepreneurial occupation. For example, in 1930, the number of foreign-born white undertakers in New York was only about one-third the number one might expect (R = 036). Perhaps as discrimination against foreign-born whites decreased over the study period, due to the demographic trends discussed earlier, their opportunities to enter other occupations increased; hence, they gravitated out of undertaking.

Table 3

-----. 1914. Census of Population: 1910, Volume 4. Occupational Statistics. Washington: GPO.

-----. 1922. Census of Population: 1920, Volume 2. General Report and Analytical Tables. Washington: GPO.

-----. 1923. Census of Population: 1920, Volume 4. Occupations. Washington: GPO.

-----. 1933a. Census of Population: 1930, Volume 4. Occupations by States. Washington: GPO.

-----. 1933b. Census of Population: 1930, Volume 2. General Report: Statistics by Subjects. Washington: GPO.

Waldinger, Roger, and Howard Aldrich. 1990. "Trends in Ethnic Business in the United States," Waldinger Roger, Howard Aldrich, and Robin Ward (eds), Ethnic Entrepreneurs: Immigrant Business in Industrial Societies, 49-78. Newbury Park, CA.: Sage Publications.

Wilson, William Julius. 1978. The Declining Significance of Race. Chicago: U. of Chicago P.

APPENDIX

African American (AA) and Foreign-Born White (FBW) Populations
of Ten Northern Cities, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930.