I save long-run figures I like and here are some of my favorites from 2022.

The child income penalty for mothers has declined since the 1970s

by Henrik Kleven henrikkleven.com/uploads/3/7/3/… The "hockey-stick" shaped convergence of White-black wealth since 1860.

By @EDerenoncourt Chi Hyun Kim @kuhnmo @MSchularick

dropbox.com/s/klo1ccg695tc…

Finally finished my tenure packet for Baylor and it caused me to reflect on how I've come up with research ideas.

This is a difficult part of grad school, so I thought I'd share my process. Also, when you hand in a tenure packet, you tend to navel gaze.

A self-indulgent thread: In grad school, Ann Carlos showed us a figure of the fertility transition. She pointed to places on the graph and said "there's a paper" and "right there too." There ended up being 10+ ideas from one graph. I didn't get it. I remember thinking: what the hell is she talking about?

As an economic historian, I can’t help but think about the incredible persistence of racial disparities. But I am hopeful that recent events will lead to a turning point.

To provide a little context about where we are, here’s some research on historical black/white disparities. 1) @TrevonDLogan examines Reconstruction and shows that black politicians increased per capita tax revenue, which helped to reduce the black-white literacy gap. However, white politicians eventually reclaimed office and halted black progress.

doi.org/10.1017/S00220…

Last week @K_A_Eriksson and my working paper on ethnic segregation between 1850-1940 came out. We provide the first estimates of ethnic segregation that cover the entire US and are comparable across space and time. Check it out! nber.org/papers/w24764 We measure segregation based on whether the next-door neighbor was US-born, which we can do thanks to the full-count censuses. This adopts @TrevonDLogan-Parman's method for black-white segregation to immigrants, and helps to overcome common measurement problems in the literature.