Abstract
Using data on employed men from the 1980 and 1991 South African Censuses, we analyze the determinants of occupational status and income. Whites are found to have much higher occupational status, and especially income, than members of other racial groups. Most of the racial differentials in occupational status can be explained by racial differences in the personal assets that determine occupational attainment (especially education), but only a much smaller fraction of the White/non-White income differential can be so explained. Despite a modest reduction between 1980 and 1991 in the role of race in socioeconomic attainment, the overall picture shows more stability than change.
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This paper is part of a larger project on racial differences in opportunity and achievement in South Africa, funded by the National Science Foundation (Grant SES89 12677) and several South African agencies: the Anglo American and De Beers Chairman’s Fund, the Trust for Educational Advancement in South Africa, the Human Sciences Research Council President’s Fund, Johannesburg Consolidated Investments, and the Union Carbide Corporation. Future papers will report on the results of a survey of a national probability sample of about 9,000 persons of all races carried out by the senior author and South African colleagues in 1991–1994. Work on the paper was facilitated by the senior author’s tenure as a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in 1992–93. The paper benefited greatly from lively discussion in the course of presentations at the Stanford Stratification Seminar, the Zurich meeting of the Research Committee on Social Stratification and Mobility, and the UCLA Comparative Stratification Seminar. The suggestions of Tom DiPrete, Mike Hout, Nelson Lim, Rob Mare, and Duncan Thomas were particularly helpful.
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Treiman, D.J., Mckeever, M. & Fodor, E. Racial differences in occupational status and income in South Africa, 1880 and 1881. Demography 33, 111–132 (1996). https://doi.org/10.2307/2061717
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/2061717