Catching Up

In his 1966 Ph.D. dissertation, Economist Finis R. Welch predicted that the pay of black workers would steadily fall further behind that of whites because the blacks would be trapped in dead-end jobs. But as a U.C.L.A. professor, he suspected that social change had outmoded his pessimism, arid he joined with James P. Smith, a Rand Corp. economist in a new study of census data. Last week they released their conclusions: between 1955 and 1975, black male workers increased their pay from 63.5% to 76.9% of the white average--and for women the black-white gap just about disappeared. In 1955 black female workers earned only 57% as much as white women; by 1975 they were up to 98.6%.

The big reason is that blacks today have the education to fill higher-paid jobs. The average black male worker in 1970 had only 1.2 fewer years of schooling than the average white, and the gap is probably smaller now. Affirmative-action programs have opened many new jobs to women--especially blacks--and the industrialization of the South has, been another powerful force. Half of all Southern black women who had jobs in 1960 worked as domestics. By 1970 the figure was down to 25%, and for black women age 21 to 25, a mere 5%,

The U.S. is still a long way from job equality. Black unemployment--11.8% in April--remains more than double the white rate. And at the pace disclosed by the study, it will take 30 to 40 more years to wipe out the differential between the pay of white and black men. Welch grants that there is no reason to be satisfied, but he adds: "A helluva lot has happened."

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