Under current law, the U.S. requires businesses and organizations to turn over unclaimed property to the relevant state government, which is responsible for locating the owners (or their heirs) and returning the property to the rightful individuals. This often requires a nominal fee when filing a claim and providing verification of owner identity. In fiscal year 2015, the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators reports that state governments received $7.763 billion in unclaimed property, of which only $3.235 billion was returned to the rightful owners.

Carruthers and Wanamaker seek to better understand changes in the black-white wage gap, hypothesizing that the period between 1940 and 1980 is especially important because these were the years in which first, school desegregation led to a reduction in the quality gap between black and white schools, and second, the labor market moved from one without explicit protections for racial minorities to one with codified protections in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

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