Human Capital and Black Women's Occupational Mobility

This paper measures the contribution of human capital to the dramatic cimprovements in black women's occupational status and relative earnings since 1940, exemplified by their shift from domestic to clerical work. Logit analysis using census data from 1940‐80 and CPS data from 1988 shows that improvements in African American women's human capital explains just one‐sixth of their entry into clerical work. Changing labor market structures, particularly during the 1960s, appear far more important.