TABLE 2.-Estimated lifetime earnings for males in the experienced civilian labor force, by years of school completed, color and major occupation group, for the north and west

[Earnings from age 18 to 64 years. Thousands of dollars. These data are from Herman P. Miller, Trends in Income Distribution in the United States; 1960 census monograph being prepared under the joint sponsorship of the Bureau of the Census and the Social Science Research Council]

TABLE 2.-Estimated lifetime earnings for males in the experienced civilian labor force, by years of school completed, color and major occupation group, for the north and west-Continued

(Earnings from age 18 to 64 years. Thousands of dollars. These data are from Herman P. Miller, Trends in Income Distribution in the United States; 1960 census monograph being prepared under the joint sponsorship of the Bureau of the Census and the Social Science Research Council]

TABLE 2.-Estimated lifetime earnings for males in the experienced civilian labor force, by years of school completed, color and major occupation group, for the north and west-Continued

[Earnings from age 18 to 64 years. Thousands of dollars. These data are from Herman P. Miller, Trends in Income Distribution in the United States; 1960 census monograph being prepared under the joint sponsorship of the Bureau of the Census and the Social Science Research Council]

Mr. MILLER. I will summarize my remarks and if you would like to interrupt, feel free to do so.

Senator CLARK. You might work from your press release.

Mr. MILLER. Thank you. I have been studying the problem of white and nonwhite income differentials during the past year. The numbers that I will present are all based on findings of the Bureau of the Census.

Many of the figures collected in the census attest to the fact that the Negro still ranks among the poorest of the poor in the United States. The lowly position of the Negro has been documented so many times and in so many ways that presenting the evidence seems like proving the obvious. Yet, what is obvious to some may not be obvious to others.

We heard this morning from Professor Ginzberg that the Negro made a breakthrough in the 1950's. Senator Javits, in his excellent book, "Discrimination, U.S.A.," also speaks about the improvement of the economic status of the Negro. Even the Department of Labor refers to the occupational gains that have been made by the Negro in the past 20 years. This is all very true, but I think it can be shown, on the basis of census statistics, that most of the improvement in occupational status that the Negro has made from 1940 has been through his movement out of sharecropping and agricultural labor in the South and into your northern industrial areas.

When we look at the figures for the Northern and Central States we find that the occupational status of the Negro relative to the white has not improved appreciably since 1940.

Senator CLARK. I don't entirely understand your first statement. What you say it is perfectly true the status of the Negro has improved. Is this because the vacuum created by the movement of the Negro north and his finding employment in the North better than in the South has lifted the national average without improving his condition in the Northern States?

Mr. MILLER. Let me rephrase that. I think we are in agreement, but I would like to put it somewhat differently.

At the national level we see an improvement in the occupational status of the Negro. The improvement comes because many more Negroes are living in the North rather than the South today. It would be incorrect to infer from this fact that job opportunities in the North have improved relatively faster for Negroes than for whites. That is an erroneous picture because job opportunities for Negroes relative to whites in a place like New York, for example, have not changed for about 20 years, according to census data.

Senator CLARK. I am still a little obtuse about this. If that is the fact, how can the statements made by Senator Javits and others, whom you just quoted, be true?

Mr. MILLER. Those statements are true only at the national level. They are more apparent than real. They are true if you look at figures for the national level; but what you are really seeing in these figures is the movement of the Negro out of the South.

Senator CLARK. I still do not get it as a matter of statistics. How can both statements be true statistically?