Note:
Gunnar Myrdal died in 1987, less than 70 years ago.
Therefore, this work is protected by copyright,
restricting your legal rights to reproduce it.
However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now.
Read more about copyright.
Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 16. Income, Consumption and Housing - 1. Family Income - 2. Income and Family Size
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
366 An American Dilemma
due to the presence of the Negro. Domestic service as well as certain other
low wage jobs are more or less completely filled by the Negroes. Since,
on the other hand, almost all well-paid work is monopolized by the whites,
the average income of white workers is fairly high. This more or less
balances the consequences of the fact that, in almost any given job, earnings
tend to be lower than in the North. In other words, because the Negro is
kept down, and because such a large part of the total urban income is
retained by the whites, the white population in the urban South is not appre-
ciably worse off than the urban population in the North—^in spite of the
greater general poverty in the South.
It goes without saying that the majority of the Negro families are
economically unable to live in a way compatible with any modern concepts
of a minimum health standard.’^ The Works Progress Administration has
made up, for 59 cities, as of March, 1935, an “emergency budget” which
averaged around $900 per year, estimated on the basis of the needs of a
family of four persons.® This standard can scarcely be characterized as a
real health standard.^ Yet more than three-fourths of the “normal” Negro
families in Columbia, South Carolina j
Mobile, Alabama; and Atlanta,
Georgia, had incomes below this limit. The conditions were much better in
Columbus, Ohio, and in Chicago, Illinois, but even there the majority of
the Negro families had sub-standard incomes. In the white urban popula-
tion of these five cities, on the other hand, almost four out of five “normal”
families had incomes high enough to buy at least an “emergency standard.”
Other income studies confirm that these differences are rather typical.®
2. Income and Family Size
The large majority of Negro families have to live on a standard which
represents a constant threat to their health. Conditions are difficult for the
large families; Family income did not show any consistent tendency to be
higher when the number of children under 16 in the family was greater.
Sometimes it was even lower when there were more children in the family.®
There is, of course, nothing surprising in this absence of any significant posi-
tive correlation between income and number of children. In the main, it
can be explained rather easily; and one finds the same phenomenon in other
countries.^® But the phenomenon is a serious one, and it does not seem as
though the full implications of it were generally understood.*^ True, large
families nowadays are not numerous. But, still, they rear the main part of
the coming generation.*® The condition of these large families, therefore,
is much more significant than is suggested by their numbers. This is particu-
larly true about Negroes, who have a greater proportion of large families
than has the white population. Then, too, it must be considered that Negro
incomes are usually so low to begin with that there is absolutely no leeway
in the budget for children. Therefore, it happens more frequently in Negro
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
