Occupational Assimilation as a Competitive Process

Insofar as Negroes and females compete with white males for jobs and are willing to accept wages below those demanded by white males, the incomes of the latter group will be adjusted downward by the competitive process. Regressions over detailed occupations of white male income on white male education, proportion Negro and proportion female for all occupations and within each major occupational level support this hypothesis, consistently indicating that white male income is negatively associated, net of education, with the proportion female and proportion Negro in an occupation. These cross-sectional results, augmented by a longitudinal analysis, suggest that discriminatory policies against females and Negroes are not due solely to prejudice but also to the attempts of occupational groups dominated by white males to avoid competition from minority workers.