Ellora Derenoncourt

About Ellora's Work

Ellora Derenoncourt is a labor economist and economic historian uncovering the historical roots of racial disparities in wealth and economic mobility in the United States. For her research on labor market standards, wage inequality, and economic policies, Derenoncourt builds innovative datasets and leverages real-world historical events as starting points of inquiry. She is identifying the key policies and drivers of ongoing gaps in earnings and accumulated wealth between Black and White Americans.

In “Can You Move to Opportunity? Evidence from the Great Migration” (2022), Derenoncourt shows that Black Americans who moved from the South to Northern cities achieved some economic gains, but economic prospects actually declined for subsequent generations. Using rigorously assembled datasets on local government expenditures and neighborhood characteristics from 1920 to 2015, she identifies backlash against the new arrivals and subsequent disinvestment in urban neighborhoods as the cause of the downward shift in economic mobility. Racial segregation in schooling increased as more White children attended private schools; funding for policing increased, as did incarceration rates. Her findings indicate that scaling up policies that relocate low-income families in large numbers to higher opportunity neighborhoods, in the hopes of offering economic stability and improving childhood outcomes, could have unintended negative consequences. In another line of research, Derenoncourt and a co-author detail the impact of the 1966 expansion of the federal minimum wage to industries like agriculture, restaurants, and nursing homes, which had high concentrations of Black workers. Their article, “Minimum Wage and Racial Inequality” (2021), shows that the expansion explains 20 percent of the Civil Rights–era drop in the racial earnings gap, nearly as much as can be explained by anti-discrimination legislation from this period. Derenoncourt has extended her investigation of minimum wage policies in studies of voluntary minimum wages at large private retailers in the United States, and, in the Brazilian context, how minimum wage increases in the formal sector had spillover effects in the informal sector. Together, this body of work presents powerful evidence that expanding universal, race-neutral policies can reduce economic inequality.

For their 2024 paper, “Wealth of Two Nations: The U.S. Racial Wealth Gap, 1860–2020,” Derenoncourt and co-authors harmonize data from a variety of sources—including the census, early state tax records, and the Survey of Consumer Finances—to create the first continuous record of the racial wealth gap from the U.S. Civil War to 2020. They determined that since the 1980s, the wealth gap has widened because earnings from investment assets have primarily benefited White households. Derenoncourt adds empirical evidence and historical context to policy conversations about the causes and potential means for repair of long-entrenched economic inequality.