Wall St.Journal Weekend 29Feb2020

A2| Saturday/Sunday, February 29 - March 1, 2020 ** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

U.S. NEWS

unique name was one held by only one individual in a given birth cohort. Exclusive names were given only to members of a particular racial group. Assignable names were disproportionately given to the members of one race. Names the researchers identified as distinctively black were both frequently and disproportionately given

THE NUMBERS|By Jo Craven McGinty

Research Ties Historic Black Names to Longer Life

Distinc-
tively black
names are of-
ten tied to
naming con-
ventions that
emerged during the Civil
Rights era.
But new research shows
that African-American men
were given distinguishable
names as far back as the Civil
War—and unlike today, when
modern black names have
been linked to discrimination,
their historical counterparts
were associated with a nota-
ble benefit: longer lives.
In the late 1800s and early
1900s, African-American men
with names researchers iden-
tified as distinctively black
lived about one year longer
on average than other Afri-
can-American men, and in in-
dividual states, the difference
wasasgreatas7.5years.
The economists who recog-
nized the patterns don’t know
what explains the correlation,
but they observed that the
names were often biblical and
had been passed down from a
father or other relative, sug-
gesting that a supportive net-
work of family, church and

community members might have contributed to the in- creased longevity. “That could be one poten- tial explanation,” said Trevon Logan of Ohio State Univer- sity, who with Lisa Cook of Michigan State University and John Parman of the College of William & Mary collaborated on the research. “We don’t know at this point. No one has researched it.”

T

he positive finding stands in contrast with studies that have con- nected modern black names to discrimination, including by employers who were less likely to call back applicants with perceived black names, teachers who expected less of children with perceived black names and college professors who weren’t as likely to dis- cuss graduate school with stu- dents who had such names. “As an economist, I often ask how can I answer some fundamental economic ques- tion,” said Dr. Cook, whose research into African-Ameri- can inventors led to the proj- ect to identify distinctively black names. “We’re answer-

ing questions about life out- comes.” Over time, the list of dis- tinctive names has changed— from Elijah and Moses in the antebellum and postbellum eras to Hakim and Darnell in the present—but the historic patterns are clear, according to the researchers, and some- times contradict previous as- sumptions. “Many people assumed they knew how African-Amer- icans were named,” Dr. Cook said. “One of the big myths was that they named them- selves for presidents. That turned out to be the case for all men.” In a pair of studies, the researchers explored the naming conventions using 1910 and 1920 census data and more than five million death records from Alabama, Illi- nois, North Carolina and Mis- souri. (At the time, those were the only states with dig- itized death records that were available for the period and included both name and race.) With the census data, the researchers established a hier- archy for given names. A

to African-American males. “We excluded idiosyncratic names,” Dr. Logan said. “They may be coded in race, but they’re not common.” The researchers, whose work was published by the peer-reviewed journal Explo- rations in Economic History, found 21 names in the census data that met their criteria. To confirm the patterns, they used Alabama death records from 1908 through 1959; Illinois death records from 1916 through 1947; and North Carolina death records from 1910 through 1970. They later added death records for Mis- souri from 1802 through 1910.

A

ccording to their find- ings, a black male liv- ing in Alabama in the late 19th and early 20th cen- turies was 16 times more likely than a white male to have one of the names on their list. A black male in North Carolina was about four times as likely to have one of the names, three times as likely in Missouri, and more than twice as likely in Illinois. “In the 1900 census,

Booker was an overwhelm- ingly white name,” Dr. Cook said. “By 1910 it was over- whelmingly black. And by 1920, it was almost exclu- sively black.” More recently, the researchers have examined 16,000 transactions from 1856 through 1861 that recorded the sales of slaves, as well as shipping manifests with infor- mation on 6,559 slaves who arrived in Georgia, South Car- olina and Alabama from 1790 through 1860. They found that the naming patterns identified in postbellum records also held true in the antebellum era. Today, none of the historic names remain popular, Dr. Logan said, but they still of- fer a glimpse into the Afri- can-American culture of the time, including, perhaps, some early declarations of autonomy. Four of the 21 distinctively black names the researchers identified in the postbellum era were Freeman, Prince, King and Master. “The names have changed,” he said, “but this is a long- standing pattern.”

Life expectancies

Source: Trevon Logan, Ohio State University

Note: Year ranges correspond to year of death.

Alabama, 1908-

Illinois, 1916-

Missouri, 1802-

North Carolina, 1910-

36.01 years old

39.

22.

40.

41.

46.

33.

44.

All black males Black males with distinctively black names

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The earliest dateat which pandemic catastrophe bonds could be triggered as a result of the coronavirus outbreak is in March. A Banking & Finance article on Feb. 20 about the bonds incorrectly said they could be triggered in February.

A chart accompanyinga Page One article on Thursday about China’s coronavirus epi- demic tracked that country’s 2019 cinema box-office daily sales and coal consumption at power plants in olive green, while data for 2020 was ren- dered in red. The chart’s leg- end incorrectly indicated that olive green represented 2018

and that red was for 2019.

U.S. stock marketswere closed on Monday, Feb. 17, in observance of the Washing- ton’s Birthday/Presidents Day holiday. In some editions Fri- day, a Page One chart showing major stock indexes’ cumula- tive percentage changes from record closes incorrectly used that date as a data point.

Rob Walton is a former chairman of Walmart. A Man- sion article on Friday about Hawaii’s Kona-Kohala coast misidentified Mr. Walton as a former chief executive of the company.

Readers can alert The Wall Street Journal to any errors in news articles by [email protected] by calling 888-410-2667.

CORRECTIONSAMPLIFICATIONS

U.S. WATCH

Bishop Edward Scharfenberger spoke Friday about the Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo filing for bankruptcy protection.

JEFFREY T. BARNES/ASSOCIATED PRESS

ated a company with more
than $9 billion in annual sales
but also with losses every year
since it went public in 2014.
It was a formula that inves-
tors mostly embraced until re-
cently. The Boston company’s
stock tumbled in October after
it reported a steep quarterly
loss, and the shares have lost
more than 50% of their value
over the past 12 months. The
stock fell a further 10% Friday
to $63.21 amid a broader mar-
ket selloff.
“Ultimately, every company
needs to be self-financing,” co-
founder and Chief Executive
Niraj Shah wrote in an email
to staff in February, explaining
his decision to cut about 550
jobs after hiring thousands of
people in recent years.
On Friday, Mr. Shah prom-
ised to moderate costs across
the company in 2020, specifi-
cally calling out advertising
spending. “We want to re-em-
phasize across Wayfair that
scarcity is an asset, and this
applies to marketing as well,”
he said on Wayfair’s earnings
call. Executives said it would
take until 2021 for the com-
pany’s U.S. business to gener-
ate consistent operating earn-
ings.

Continued from Page One

BUFFALO

Catholic Diocese

Files for Bankruptcy

The Roman Catholic Diocese
of Buffalo filed for bankruptcy
on Friday, following a number of
sexual-abuse lawsuits lodged
against it since August.
Buffalo is the 22nd Catholic di-
ocese to seek bankruptcy protec-
tions since 2004, when a wave of
sexual-abuse allegations against
the church began, and the second
in New York since a new state
law last year temporarily lifted
the civil statute of limitations on
child sexual abuse. The law,
known as the Child Victims Act,
allows those who say they were
sexually abused as children to
sue, no matter when it occurred.
In the bankruptcy filing, the
diocese estimated its total as-
sets at between $10 million and
$50 million and its liabilities at
between $50 million and $
million. It has at least 200 credi-
tors, according to the filing.
The former bishop of Buffalo
resigned last year following ac-
cusations he covered up clergy
sex abuse.
— Ian Lovett

NEW YORK

Lawsuit Postpones

Plastic-Bag Ban

New York state agreed to delay
enforcement of a ban on plastic
bags set to take effect Sunday un-
til April 1, after a lawsuit was filed
Friday challenging the new law.

At a court hearing, a lawyer representing the state’s Depart- ment of Environmental Conser- vation agreed not to levy any fines related to the ban, accord- ingtoacourtorder. A plastic-bag manufacturer and an association of New York City bodega owners sued the DEC, saying regulations concern-

ing exactly which types of bags were banned were inconsistent with the law adopted last year. New York State Supreme Court Justice L. Michael Mackey declined to issue a temporary re- straining against the law as the suit moves forward. Matt Seaholm, executive di- rector of the American Recycla-

ble Plastic Bag Alliance, which represents manufacturers, said the DEC’s announcement is “a big win for New York retailers and shoppers, hitting the pause button on the pending bag ban that has caused unnecessary confusion and stress statewide.” A department spokeswoman said: “We have consistently said

since the beginning of our outreach campaign that we will focus on ed- ucation rather than enforcement and today does not change that.” The ban applies to all retailers who are required to collect sales tax, though exceptions exist, including for prepared food from restau- rants and food-delivery companies. —Jimmy Vielkind

WISCONSIN

Appeals Court Reverses Voter Purge

A Wisconsin appeals court on Friday overturned a ruling that orderedtheremovalofupto 209,000 people from the state’s voter rolls, handing Democrats a victory in a case they said was intended to make it more difficult for their voters to cast bal- lots in November. The court in January put the ruling, and the purge, on hold while it considered the case. The 4th District Court of Appeals ruling overturned the decision of an Ozaukee County judge who initially had ruled in favor of a conservative law firm that was seeking the purge. The appeals court also vacated an order from that same judge that found the state Elections Commission in contempt for not moving forward with the purge. The appeals court sent the case back to the lower court and ordered that it be dismissed. The case has received a lot of attention because Wisconsin is among a group of swing states being targeted by Demo- crats and President Trump this year. A spokesman for the Wiscon- sin Institute for Law and Liberty, which brought the case on be- half of three voters, had no comment. The Elections Com- mission and state Department of Justice, which represented it, also had no comment. —Associated Press

After years of pushing growth, top executives began to prioritize profitability in presentations to managers late last year, according to former employees. In one December meeting, Mr. Shah showed how hiring was growing faster than revenue, said one of these people. In past group meetings Mr. Shah primarily spoke about “compounding growth,” said this person. A spokeswoman declined to comment on the meetings. “Since we founded the company in 2002 we have always had periods where we invested very heavily in the business and periods where we have worked to drive greater effi- ciency,” Mr. Shah wrote in his memo in February. “On reflec- tion, this last period of invest- ment went on too long.” Both startups and public companies have found investors cooling on companies that don’t generate profits since office-rental giant WeWork’s IPO plans unraveled last year. Mat- tress seller Casper Sleep Inc. recently had to slash its valua- tion to go public and its shares are now trading below the IPO price. Wayfair’s strategy to gain dominance in the online fur- nishings category has been to deliver large, bulky items bet- ter than its competitors through supply-chain investments, said Brian Nagel, an analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. The retailer is following a similar playbook to Ama- zon.com Inc. and has taken ad-

vantage of cheap capital to “lose money and build a com- petitive moat around the business that will help support the business long term,” Mr. Nagel said. But it is difficult for tradi- tional and online furniture chains to generate profits amid stiff pricing competition and the high costs of shipping bulky furniture. Home-goods chain Pier 1 Imports Inc., which was slow to embrace online sales, filed for bankruptcy protection in February. In January, Walmart Inc. laid off most of the headquarters staff at Hayneedle, an online furniture seller it ac-

quired in 2016, as it works to make its U.S. e-commerce business more profitable. Wayfair spent $311 million on advertising in the fourth quarter, amounting to about $28 per order. Even excluding all its advertising costs, the company barely broke even in the holiday period, analysts said. Executives said growth would slow in the current quarter as they pull back on advertising. They predicted revenue rising between 15% to 17% year over year, which would make it the slowest quarterly rate since the company went public.

Some analysts remain un- convinced that Wayfair can wean itself from spending. “Revenue growth seems more intertwined with ad spend, promotions and ongo- ing investments than the market appreciates,” Morgan Stan- ley analyst Simeon Gutman said in a note earlier this past week, downgrading the company to the equivalent of a sell rating. “The market is less tolerant of unprofitable online retailers,” he added. Friday’s results, with weaker-than-expected revenue and guidance, show the company’s financial position is de-

celerating, Mr. Gutman said. “Wayfair needs to do more, with less,” he said. Despite the desire of some investors to see Wayfair focus on profits, the company’s lead- ership can’t afford to become complacent about competition, given that both Amazon and Walmart are poised to become more aggressive in the home category, said Colin Sebastian, an analyst at Robert W. Baird &Co. “There’s just a window of opportunity for them,” he said. “So why would they try to harvest profits when there’s a lot more at stake over the very long term?”

Expenses

Deal Blow

To Wayfair

Wall St.Journal Weekend 29Feb2020

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