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α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count
Decreases in the racial schooling gap have been shown to account for one-third of the increase in the black-white income ratio from 1930 to 1970. But the usual measure of the gap, based on census educational attainment data, is flawed. Data on school enrollment rates and months of school attended reveal that schooling levels of blacks born in the late nineteeth century were far lower than census data indicate. With the corrections proposed, the narrowing of the racial schooling gap explains two-thirds of the rise in the black-white income ratio from 1930 to 1970.