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(1944) [MARC] Author: Gunnar Myrdal
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i28o An American Dilemma
was about $30, but all the states in the Upper and Lower South showed lower figures;
most of them paid between $10 and $18. Negroes usually received less than did whites,
at least in rural areas. In the Eastern cotton area, for instance, the average grant to
whites in June, 1935, was $16, whereas Negroes received $13.^
This tendency to disregard the Negro in most of the current reporting on relief
may often be due, of course, to a desire not to publicize racial discrimination. Some
social workers have given Sterner another explanation which, in many cases, may be
almost equally feasible: when there are relatively more Negroes on the relief rolls than
in the general population, such statistics could bring about pressure from white tax-
payers wanting to limit relief appropriations to Negroes. Quite unrealistic, on the
other hand, is the following rather usual explanation: “Since we don’t discriminate
against Negroes, we have no reason to count them separately in the statistics.”
®^Alva Myrdal, Nation and Family (1941), p. 134.
In 1937 over 32,000,00p workers were covered by old age insurance. Of those
over 2,240,000, or 6.9 per cent, were Negroes. Together with other nonwhites they
constituted still not more than 7.8 per cent of the total coverage. According to the
1940 Census, on the other hand, 10.7 per cent of the total labor force (including unem-
ployed persons and relief workers) was nonwhite.*^
Those covered by insurance in 1937 constituted over 70 per cent of all workers
actually employed in 1940. Three-fourths of the white workers but only one-half of
nonwhite workers were covered. There was a great difference, however, between the
South and the rest of the country. In the North the overwhelming majority not only
of the white but also of the nonwhite workers were within the old age system. In the
South, on the other hand, about three-fifths of the Negro workers and almost half the
white workers were in uncovered occupations. The old age pension system was particu-
larly inefiicient in regard to female nonwhite workers. North as well as South; only
about one-fourth of them were covered.®
The real race diflferential is even greater, however, than these figures suggest. Even
in covered occupations, low-wage workers arc often denied any benefits from the
system. Since Negro covered workers had only 3 per cent of the total taxable wage
income,^ it is obvious that such additional restrictions must hit them worse than the
whites. In general, in order to qualify for old age benefits, a worker “must have had at
least 1 quarter of coverage for each 2 calendar quarters elapsing during his working
lifetime.”® Quarters during which he has had a wage income of less than $50 are
not counted as having been “covered.” Not less than 42 per cent of the covered Negro
* Sterner and Associates, of, cit,^ p. 227.
^ Social Security Board, Old Age and Survivors Insurance Statistics^ Emfloyment and
Wages of Covered Workers^ igs8 (1940), pp. 16-18. Sixteenth Census of the United States:
1940^ Population, Preliminary Release, Series P-4, No. 4.
* Idem, and Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Population, Preliminary Release,
Series P-4a, Nos. 14 to 16. It is obvious that these percentages cannot be exact. Not only is
there a time differential; there is also the fact that covered workers include unemployed as
well as employed persons. The comparison gives some idea, however, about the relative
eiffdency of the system for various groups.
^ Idem,
•Wayne F. Caskey, “Workers with Annual Taxable Wages of less than $200 in 1937-39,”
Social Security Bulletin (October, 1941), pp. 17-24.

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