Comparing Presidents, Black and White Real Median Income

This post is on real median income for white people, real median income for black people, and the ratio of black to white median income. The post looks at how these three series evolved over time and by Presidential administration. As noted in the post on male and female income, the President is in charge of the Justice Department, which in theory is supposed to care about discrimination, so its not a stretch to assume that perhaps the President has some effect, however small, on the gap between black and white income.

Data for this post comes from the Census.

Here are some graphs…

Here are some summary tables…

So from this… JFK/LBJ, Clinton, and Reagan are 1, 2, and 3 for white income. GHW and Carter bring up the rear. JFK/LBJ, Clinton and Reagan are 1, 2 and 3 for black income as well, but there is a difference… under Clinton, real median income for black people rose by over 2.5 times as much per year as under Reagan. And while Carter didn’t do so well, the last two slots went to the Bush-league boys.

In terms of closing the gap between white and black income, JFK/LBJ and Clinton did best, and the Bush leaguers did the worst. But some of the results are kind of perverse… Reagan, who was third for both white and black median income came in only sixth because relatively, median black income lost ground relative to median white income during his term.

Thus, while these series are imperfect, its not hard to see why some Democratic administrations still engender positive feelings among many black voters. Its hard to conclude that the two administrations under which black people fared the best relative to other administrations (by a huge margin) just happened to be the two administrations that talked the most about Civil Rights. Not that I don’t expect to see that argument made.

Next post in the series… something a little bit different… we’re gonna go all artsy fartsy…