Contact: Kelley Bozeman

These findings come from projects supported by the center’s Regional Small Grants Program for 2003-04. Full reports of each project are available on the UK Center for Poverty Research Web site.

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Jan. 20, 2005) -- Three research projects funded by t he University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research investigate the growth of the low-skill immigrant population in the South, the comparably poorer health of residents of the South, and the positive impact of school integration on reducing the wage gap separating African Americans and whites across the region.

The sponsored projects were conducted by George Borjas of Harvard University, Janet Bronstein of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Jacob Vigdor of Duke University.

Michael O’Grady, assistant secretary for planning and evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, whose office provides the core support for the UK Center for Poverty Research, said, “A key goal of the center is to expand our capacity to focus on policy issues relevant to reducing poverty in Southern and Appalachian states. These research projects, sponsored by the center, are an important part of that agenda."

In his study, Borjas examined trends in immigrant settlement patterns and the impact of this relocation on the skill endowment of the workforce in the South. Using data drawn from the 1960-2000 Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) of the U.S. Census, Borjas found that substantial changes in immigrant settlement patterns led to the rise of a sizable foreign-born, low-skill workforce in the South, particularly outside Florida and Texas, in the so-called non-immigrant South.  

Borjas reported that this workforce developed both as a result of increased settlement of newly arrived low-skill immigrants in those states and increased internal migration of low-skill, foreign-born workers from other regions to the South. The findings showed the changing immigration patterns caused a 20 percentage point reduction in the relative wages of immigrants in the South overall, and a nearly 40 percentage point decline in the southern states outside Florida and Texas.

Bronstein’s study used the Community Tracking Study Household Survey to show that residents of the South report more chronic conditions, poorer general health and more restrictions due to physical health than residents of the Northeast, as well as more functional restrictions related to physical and mental health than residents of the Midwest.

Bronstein found regional variations persist across all income levels, suggesting that underlying features causing these variations affect the entire population of the region. However, regional variations in measures of mental-health function clearly differ across income groups, with low-income residents in the South experiencing the highest levels of mental-health functional limitations.

In his study, Vigdor examined regional differences in the black-white earnings gap, which has historically been larger in the South than in other regions. Vigdor found the regional gap has closed over time and has, in fact, reversed among younger cohorts of men during the last decades of the 20th century, with the South becoming the region with the lowest degree of racial inequality.

Using data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the IPUMS of the U.S. Census, Vigdor found the integration of southern schools played a central role in the South’s progress. He examined other possible explanations for the closure of the regional gap, including changing patterns of selective migration and reduced discrimination in southern labor markets, both of which occurred during this same time period. However, Vigdor demonstrated empirically that selective black migration is not the sole explanation for the convergence. He also found that although fair employment legislation explains rapid regional convergence in racial wage gaps between 1960 and 1980, the more recent decline in the regional wage gap is related to narrower disparities in school quality and lower segregation levels in the South.

These findings come from projects supported by the center’s Regional Small Grants Program for 2003-04. Full reports of each project are available on the UK Center for Poverty Research Web site.