discrimination have resulted in victimized families passing down less wealth, resulting in a shortage of resources (such as education and financial capital) to get a higher-paying job or start a business. Specific groups Wage gaps have been identified for many races within the United States; however, research has found that the size and causes of the wage gap differs by race. For instance, the median black male worker earns 74 percent as much as the median white male worker, while the median Hispanic male worker earns only 63 percent as much. African American The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade employers from discriminating on the basis of race, was one of the earliest and greatest influences on the black-white wage gap. The act, along with the economic prosperity of the 1960s, contributed to rising black wages, increased education for blacks, and increased returns to education. Indeed, in 1940, weekly wages of the average black male were only 48.4 percent that of the average white male. In 1990, that had risen to 75 percent, a 60 percent improvement over five decades. From the ending of legal segregation through the mid-1970s, the black-white wage gap continued to narrow. However, from the mid-1970s until almost 1990, progress in wage equality greatly slowed. From 1968-1979, the black-white wage gap decreased by an average of 1.2 percent each year. During the 1980s, it increased an average of .24 percent each year, and in the 1990s, it decreased an average of .59 percent each year. This proportional decrease was also accompanied by a decrease in the absolute difference of black and white wages. Analyses have uncovered some of the underlying influences in the improvements of the black-white wage gap. During the decades of progress (the 1970s and 1990s), 30 percent of the wage gap convergence can be attributed to changes in black education and experience. More equalization in employment distribution also influenced the convergence during those decades. Factors identified as contributing to decreases in wage gap convergence include "shifts in industry demand, greater occupational crowding, relative deterioration of unobservable skills in blacks, and rising overall male wage inequality". The decline of the black-white wage gap in the 1990s was greatest for those who have less than 10 years of potential experience, for whom it decreased 1.40 percent per year. Kenneth Couch and Mary C. Daly report in their 2002 study on black-white wage inequality that