Black Occupational Change and Education
A study of census data shows that differences in the occupational distribution of the male and nonwhite male labor force in the United States have declined slightly between 1950 and 1970, both overall and within educational groups. However, differences in level of schooling or test achievement between whites and nonwhites cannot explain the underrepresentation of nonwhites in managerial, sales, and skilled manual occupations. The proportionate representation of nonwhites in occupations, instead, is a function of the income of the occupation relative to its educational prerequisites. Equal recruitment of educationally qualified nonwhites into skilled crafts and managerial jobs would significantly upgrade the occupational and income status of about fifteen percent of the nonwhite male labor force.
Differential Trends Toward Equality Between Whites and Nonwhites
The confusion as to whether nonwhites are moving toward equality with whites in various areas can be resolved by the use of an equality index which is a measure of the amount of overlap between two percentage distributions. The El is the complement of the index of dissimilarity but the El has the advantages of easier calculation and of positive directionality. Relative to comparisons of central tendency and most other indexes, the El has the advantages of applying to ordinal as well as interval data, of having less sensitivity to the influence of extreme cases and of reflecting general changes in the distributions. The El shows that nonwhites have made substantial progress toward equality in income, education, occupation, weeks worked, and quality of housing. Mortality shows little or no movement toward equality since 1960 and marital status has moved away from equality since 1950. T here has been considerable doubt as to whether nonwhites are actually moving toward equality with whites in the various sectors of our society. The Moynihan Report (1965) concluded that the Negro American world is moving toward "massive deterioration of the fabric of society and its institutions." President Johnson (1965) asserted that "For the great majority of Negro Americans -the poor, the unemployed, the uprooted and the dispossessed . . . the walls are rising and the gulf is widening." Carmichael and Hamilton (1967) state specifically "It is a stark reality that the black communities are becoming more and more economically depressed." Pettigrew (1964) concludes that the absolute gains of Negroes are "pale when contrasted with current white standards." Yet most of the available statistics show that Negroes are making substantial progress in most fields. Part of the confusion is caused by the fact that no one has systematically applied a standard index of equality to all the various kinds of statistics available in order to measure trends in equality. There have been many studies which summarize the statistics on the status of Negroes at one point in time (U.S. Department of HEW, 1965; Broom and Glenn, 1967; Glenn and Bonjean, 1969; Price, 1968; Duncan and Duncan, 1969; U.S. Department of Labor, 1966; U.S. Office of Education, 1966; Fein, 1965; Siegel, 1965; Farley and Taeuber, 1968; Moynihan, 1965; Pettigrew, 1964) and some * This research was supported in part by Grant HD-00668, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, USPHS. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.167 on Thu, 21 Jul 2016 06:08:00 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms TRENDS TOWARD RACIAL EQUALITY 109 of these present trend data in selected areas. But most of the indexes and the comparisons of central tendencies are either not applicable to much of the data or are inadequate in various ways discussed below. Those that are adequate, such as the index of dissimilarity (Duncan and Duncan, 1955), have not been systematically applied to the wide range of available data. Ginzberg and Hiestand (1968) summarized this problem as follows: Instead of being at two distinct levels, the distributions of the two populations (white and Negro) in terms of income, occupation, education, or otherwise, overlap substantially over a broad range. As far as we know, no analyst has yet developed a statistical measure to summarize the degree of overlap. Such a statistic might be called a measure of integration. It is badly needed for then we could begin to answer whether there has been a trend toward more or less integration in income, educational levels, occupations, or other criteria. Also, the use of different indexes for different sets of data can produce confusing and misleading results. As Duncan and Duncan (1969) point out: "One can discount or exaggerate the trends by manipulating ratios, absolute differences, and Fein gaps." The purposes of this paper are: (1) to describe a standard index of equality that can be used with ordinal as well as interval data and to discuss its advantages over other measures; (2) to use this equality index to measure the differential trends in income, educaton, occupation, weeks worked, housing, mortality, and marital status; (3) to discuss briefly some of the possible explanations for the differential trends.
Testosterone levels, handedness and sex ratio at birth.
Geschwind has hypothesized that levels of androgens in utero affect postnatal laterality preferences, high levels being associated with left-handedness of offspring. I have hypothesized that high parental androgen levels at the time of conception are associated with subsequent male births. However, left-handed parents seem to produce an excess of female, not male, offspring. This finding could be reconciled with the two hypotheses if individuals who were exposed to high levels of androgens in utero had low circulating levels in adulthood. Some evidence for this loophole is reviewed here. Lyster & Lloyd (1987, J. theor. Biol. 126, 125) have reported that (consistent with the hypotheses) index left-handed men have an excess of brothers; but, contrary to the hypotheses, index left-handed women have an excess of sisters. Accordingly these authors proposed that left-handedness in females is associated not with high levels of androgen in utero, but with a "sensitivity" to it. If such sensitivity were associated with low androgen levels, it might explain an excess of sisters among the sibs of left-handed women. It is shown here that evidence in agreement with this hypothesis (though not discriminating between it and Geschwind's) suggests that the sex ratios of offspring of LH male x RH female and of RH male x LH female matings, are both low.