Some Economics of the 1968 US Riots

By Timothy Taylor.

"For example, this figure shows the black-white ratio of family incomes in rioting (blue) and nonrioting (orange) cities. The ratio hasn't moved much in the cities that had 1960s riots, while it increased substantially in the cities without riots. Indeed, the cities that did not riot have had slightly more equal black-white income ratios for most of the last few decades. 

These sorts of patterns are open to a range of interpretations. Perhaps cities were less likely to riot in the late 1960s if more immediate progress in black-white incomes was happening. Perhaps something about having a higher black-white income ratio at the start made rioting more likely. Perhaps rioting led to an outmigration of middle- and upper-class families of both races, which could contribute to a stagnation of the black-white ratio. The cities that rioted were mainly the northeast, midwest, and west, and so political, social, and economic differences across the geography of the US surely also have played a role. 

In other measures like the black-white ratios of unemployment rates, high school graduation rates, and poverty rates, the rioting and non-rioting cities look very similar. As Gooden and Myers write: 

"This evidence points to a possible flaw in the Kerner Commission’s report. Although the evidence clearly points to a divided America—a divide that continues today—the trajectories of the riot cities and the nonriot cities are remarkably similar. Thus, it is a bit more difficult to embrace the conclusion that this racial divide was the cause of the riots given that the racial divide was evident in both riot cities and nonriot cities and perhaps was even more pronounced in the nonriot cities than in the riot cities before the riots.""