DISCRIMINATION ON NONWAGE MARGINS: SAFETY IN THE WEST VIRGINIA COAL INDUSTRY, 1906–1925

Most discrimination studies analyze wage differentials. This paper more stringently examines the market's ability to limit the impact of discrimination. It tests for safety discrimination in the absence of piece‐rate wage differentials in a turn‐of‐the‐century labor market unconstrained by antidiscrimination law and extensive regulation. A new method, comparisons of ethnic fatality‐experience profiles, captures the impact of the workers' experience on their ability to avoid danger, as well as racial differences in exposure to danger. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that blacks were not victims of safety discrimination in the labor market.