Explaining the Recent Employment Gap between Black and White Women

This paper examines the reversal in the black / white employment gap in weeks worked per year from 1975 to 1990 among women, focusing on the 1990 gap in which white women work more weeks per year than black women. Regression decompositions reveal that black women's lower levels of education and their steeper returns to education explain a sizeable portion of their 1990 employoment gap with white women. In addition, black women's greater likelihood of being never married with children explains over half of their employment gap with white women in 1990. The spatial-mismatch hypothesis receives limited support, and state welfare payment levels do not explain the black / white employment gap among women in 1990. I conclude with public policy implications of this research.