"Conservatives tend to regard the growing trend of single-parent families as an issue of personal responsibility, but what if the liberals who blame society are partly right?
Prior to the 1930s, the labor force participation rate for black Americans was roughly equal to that of whites.
Following passage of the first federal minimum wage in 1931, these rates started to diverge, and from the 1950s to the present, national black unemployment has remained at double the rate for whites. This is not surprising: Minimum wage restrictions discourage businesses from hiring workers who are regarded as “less marketable” due to either their lack of experience or societal prejudice.
Following passage of the first federal minimum wage in 1931, these rates started to diverge, and from the 1950s to the present, national black unemployment has remained at double the rate for whites. This is not surprising: Minimum wage restrictions discourage businesses from hiring workers who are regarded as “less marketable” due to either their lack of experience or societal prejudice.
The impact of minimum wage on worker participation depends on how much it exceeds market-based wages.
...To detect the effect of the regulatory environment on black Americans I limited the data to states with significant black populations because these states are more likely to provide a representative sample for this group.
Based on this sub-sample the line representing blacks is noticeably steeper than the line representing whites (Fig. 1).
This means that the “employment gap” between blacks and whites widens as state regulations become less conducive to business.
...To detect the effect of the regulatory environment on black Americans I limited the data to states with significant black populations because these states are more likely to provide a representative sample for this group.
Based on this sub-sample the line representing blacks is noticeably steeper than the line representing whites (Fig. 1).
This means that the “employment gap” between blacks and whites widens as state regulations become less conducive to business.
Fig. 1: Based on data from Forbes (2016), the U.S. Census Bureau (2015), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (2015) as cited by Thomas C. Frohlich in 24/7 Wall Street. 24/7 Wall Street.
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