Does School Quality Explain the Recent Black/White Wage Trend?

Abstract

Around 1980, the trend toward racial wage convergence essentially stopped. The author asks whether this break in the convergence trend can be explained by school quality. Department of Education surveys provide earnings data for the high school class of 1972 in 1979 and the class of 1980 in 1986, both linked to data from the respondents' high schools. By several measures, differences between schools attended by blacks and whites were already rather small in the 1970s. Furthermore, the author finds that measurable school inputs generally have little effect on wages. Thus school quality explains little of the recent black/white wage trend. Copyright 1996 by University of Chicago Press.