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.