Ecological Race Differences in the Occupational Structure

Motivated by existing work that explores the impact of urbanization and spatial segregation on occupational outcomes, we utilize General Social Survey data from 1990 to 2006 to investigate the interrelationships among race, urbanization, and occupation. Our results indicate that white professionals are associated with several levels of urbanization, while black professionals are weakly associated with any level of urbanization. We also explore other dimensions of stratification by including education and gender into our analyses. Our findings suggest that the relationship between occupation and urbanization is highly complex with some distinctive patterns, and that education—the great equalizer—only partially ameliorates racial and gender differences.