The Allocation of Talent and U.S. Economic Growth

Over the last 50 years, there has been a remarkable convergence in the occupational distribution between white men, women, and blacks. We measure the macroeconomic consequences of this convergence through the prism of a Roy model of occupational choice in which women and blacks face frictions in the labor market and in the accumulation of human capital. The changing frictions implied by the observed occupational convergence account for 15 to 20 percent of growth in aggregate output per worker since 1960.