What explains the continuing decline in labor force activity among young black men?1

In this paper we show that employment rates among less-educated young black men in the US continued their long secular decline in the 1980s and 1990s. We review a range of potential causes of this problem, including weak schooling, persistent discrimination, declining real wages and the disappearance of blue-collar jobs. For the 1990s, we also focus on two fairly new developments: the dramatic rise in the numbers of young black men with criminal records and the rise in child support enforcement upon low-income non-custodial fathers. We also discuss the implications of these findings for policy.