Based on detailed occupation titles and making use of measures that do not require pairwise
comparisons among demographic groups, this paper shows that the occupational
segregation of Black women declined dramatically in 1940-1980, decreased slightly in
1980-2000, and remained stagnant in 2000-2010. An important contribution of this
paper is the quantification of the well-being losses that these women derive from their
occupational sorting. The segregation reduction was indeed accompanied by well-being
improvements, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. Regarding the role that education has
played, this study highlights that, only from 1990 onward, Black women with either
some college or university degrees had lower segregation (as compared with their peers)
than those with lower education. Nevertheless, the well-being loss that Black women
with university degrees derived in 2010 for being segregated from their peers in
education was not too different from that of Black women with lower education.