Not Black-Alone: The 2008 Presidential Election and Racial Self-Identification among African Americans

This paper estimates a reduced form racial identity equation for a sample of African American survey respondents. The change in a state’s fraction of white votes for Obama in 2008 relative to Kerry in 2004 provides an empirical proxy for a change in white antagonism toward African Americans. Using Current Population Survey data from 2003 to 2013, this paper finds that there is a positive and statistically significant Obama-effect on African American self-identification as mixed-race rather than as black-alone.     

Using the Blinder-Oaxaca Decomposition Method to Measure Racial Bias in Achievement Tests

The Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition technique is typically applied to gender or racial earnings gaps with the goal of determining the percent of the gap that can be attributed to differences in attributes between groups and to labor market discrimination. We apply this technique to the racial gap in achievement tests with the goal of measuring the relative racial bias of these tests. The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) and the Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT) were administered to respondents from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Decomposition results indicate that up to 49.5 % of the white-black gap in the PIAT is explained by racial differences in average attributes. The corresponding figure for the ASVAB is 44.7 %. Since the same sample and specification are used in estimating ASVAB and PIAT scores, the difference in the percent of the gaps due to attributes can be ascribed to test score bias and not omitted variable bias. Therefore, the results suggest that the “discrimination” or bias of the ASVAB is greater than the PIAT.     

Job Satisfaction in the United States: Are Blacks Still More Satisfied?

Despite the substantial literature on the paradox of the happy female worker, research has been sparse in investigating race differences in job satisfaction. The last national level study on racial differences in job satisfaction was done in 1981 when, using national level U.S. data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Mature Men for 1966, 1969 and 1971, Bartel showed that blacks had significantly more job satisfaction and further, that this racial gap had widened during this time. Though the reasons for this gap and its widening were not investigated, it was suggested, in a close parallel to the reason for the contented female worker, that lower expectations, in this case due to discrimination in the labor market, could be a reasonable explanation. Surprisingly, since then, there have been only a handful of studies focused on smaller, specific groups. This paper exploits two U.S. national level data sets, the GSS and the NLSY 1997, to examine the racial gap in job satisfaction. Simple means show that blacks are much less satisfied than whites and moreover, this difference has persisted not only across genders but also across almost four decades. To isolate the pure race effect, a sequential process is adopted by first examining the simple difference in the means of job satisfaction, then, through probit estimation, seeing the impact of individual attributes, finally progressing to incorporation of job attributes. Probit estimates give robust results. Blacks are significantly less satisfied than whites even when income, benefits and occupations are controlled. However, this racial gap is greater in the case of women and younger black men. An exploratory analysis shows that when discrimination is accounted for, the satisfaction gap is further reduced and the race coefficients are rendered insignificant. Estimates with comparison income show that the satisfaction gap is driven by perceived discrimination and not necessarily discrimination as captured by comparison income. This highlights the importance of policy measures to reduce perceptual discrimination.     

Families in the Gautreaux Housing Mobility Program: Perceptions and Responses to the U.S. Political Economy

This study examines how perceptions of shifts in the U.S. political economy such as those associated with the Great Migration(s), the Civil Rights Movement, and various housing policies influenced the lives of three generations of African American families and children. This study looks at the experiences of families living in Chicago, Illinois who participated in the Gautreaux Assisted Housing Program, which was a direct result of the Civil Rights Movement. A qualitative analysis is employed that analyzes the perceptions of Gautreaux participants (N?=?25) about how changes in the U.S. political economy affect their life course development and the life courses of their parents (N?=?50) and children (N?=?72). Added to the perceptions of Gautreaux participants is an intergenerational analysis of educational achievement and occupational attainment in the context of a changing U.S. political economy from the Jim Crow era to the post-Civil Rights era. The findings suggest that in many cases participants perceived expanding opportunities but also recognized the persistence of structural constraints. They identified several structural changes that they believed influenced their families’ educational and occupational opportunities: industrial jobs in the North, civil rights protests by African Americans against employment and housing discrimination (and the resulting policies like “affirmative action”), as well as increased government funding for job training and education. The intergenerational analysis of educational and occupational achievement revealed that each Gautreaux generation has higher rates of college attendance and post-high school training, as well as a greater range of occupations. I argue that the interplay between changing structural forces and bundled acts of resistance over the three generations created pathways that significantly improved life course development within and across the generations.     

What Does a High School Diploma Get You? Employment, Race, and the Transition to Adulthood

We compare the employment of African American and white youth as they transition to adulthood from age 18 to 22, focusing on high school graduates and high school dropouts who did not attend college. Using OLS and hazard models, we analyze the relative employment rates, and employment consistency, stability, and timing, controlling for a number of factors including family income, academic aptitude, prior work experience, and neighborhood poverty. We find white high school graduates work significantly more than all other youth on most measures; African American high school graduates work as much and sometimes less than white high school dropouts; African American dropouts work significantly less than all other youth. Findings further suggest that the improved labor market participation associated with a high school diploma is higher over time for African Americans than for white youth.     

African American Women Voters: Review Article

This article reviews a book written by Lisa Nikol Nealy entitled: African American Women Voters: Racializing Religiosity, Political Consciousness and Progressive Political Action in U.S. Presidential Elections from 1964 Through 2008 (2009). I extracted the following themes from the book: (1) the importance and influence of the Black church or religious organizations and their leaders on the level of political participation of African Americans, especially Black women in the United States; (2) that Black and White gentile European Americans are experiencing two racial religiosities, which is reflected in the voting booth during national elections; (3) that relative to their Black male counterparts and members of other racial groups, Black women have made enormous contributions to U.S. politics especially in voting trends from the 1960s to present; and (4) there continues to be a serious division between Black and White American females, a division which is rooted in religious and racial histories of the two groups.     

Race, culture, and skill: Interracial wage differences among African Americans, Latinos, and whites

This article examines the interrelationships among race, culture, skill, and the distribution of wages. I utilize a three-equation system to explore this process: skill is a multidimensional productive attribute measured by years of education and work effort; educational attainment is a function of class background and individual effort; and individual wage rates are a function of skill and class background. By further assuming that effort is differentially distributed across individuals and social groups, I am able to estimate reduced form equations for educational and earnings attainment, where both equations are functions of the class backgrounds and race of individuals. The collective results of this article challenge the conventional wisdom among economists that African American and Latino job skills are of a lower quality than white job skills. To the extent that effort is an important element of worker skill, our results suggest that neither African American nor Latino labor is of lower quality than white labor. The results regarding differences between African Americans and whites in educational attainment, i.e., African Americans are able to translate a given level of resources into higher levels of educational attainment, reaffirm previous findings in the literature. The results on Latino versus white educational attainment are novel. Additionally, unlike previous research, this article connects racial differences in the skill acquisition process to the economics of discrimination.     

Black-White Disparities in Test Scores: Distributional Characteristics

This paper investigates the distributional characteristics of racial differences in mathematics achievement, with particular attention to the potential influence of unexplained, and possibly unwarranted, racial differentials in rates of school suspension. It is well known that black students consistently score lower than whites on achievement tests, on average, even after controlling for family and schooling factors. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 cohort, we decompose the racial gap in mathematics test scores from the Peabody Individual Achievement Test-Revised (PIAT-R) into a component due to racial differences in underlying characteristics and another component that is unexplained by differences in measured characteristics. We account for the possible endogeneity of suspensions in our analysis and show that the portion of the racial gap that is unexplained differs between the top and the bottom of the test score distribution. Our results suggest that researchers should pay more attention to the problem of concentration of black students among those at the bottom of the distribution and their scarcity among those at the top of the test score distribution to better understand the factors that account for the observed disparities.     

A crumbling legacy: The decline of African American insurance companies in contemporary America

African American insurance companies, since the 1960s, have experienced a significant decline in their profitability and stature. Because of recent racial desegregation, which in an economic sense consists of white-controlled businesses and black consumers increasing their interaction with each other, black insurers are waging an increasingly difficult struggle to survive. It appears the only way African American insurance companies can counteract this disturbing trend is to voluntarily merge into one “mega” company. Such a maneuver would empower consolidated black insurers to better serve African American consumers and to make definitive inroads in cultivating the burgeoning African consumer market.     

The mortality consequences of distinctively black names

Race-specific given names have been linked to a range of negative outcomes in contemporary studies, but little is known about their long-term consequences. Building on recent research which documents the existence of a national naming pattern for African American males in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Cook, Logan and Parman, 2014), we analyze long-term consequences of distinctively racialized names. Using over 3 million death certificates from Alabama, Illinois, Missouri and North Carolina from 1802 to 1970, we find a robust within-race mortality difference for African American men who had distinctively black names. Having an African American name added more than 1 year of life relative to other African American males. The result is robust to controlling for the age pattern of mortality over time and environmental factors which could drive the mortality relationship. The result is not consistently present for infant and child mortality, however. As much as 10% of the historical between-race mortality gap would have been closed if every black man was given a black name. Suggestive evidence implies that cultural factors not captured by socioeconomic or human capital measures may be related to the mortality differential.     

Race and the Dynamics of Men’s Mobility into Management from Working Class Jobs

Within the context of the “particularistic mobility thesis” we examine African American/White differences in the incidence, determinants and timing of mobility into management at a refined level, namely, when groups share similar “rank and file” and “elite blue collar” working class jobs. Findings from a Panel Study of Income Dynamics sample of men support theory and indicate that from both job categories, African Americans, relative to Whites, have lower rates of mobility, reach management through a route that is relatively formal and structured by a traditional range of stratification-based causal factors and take longer to reach management. Further, as predicted by theory, racial disadvantage experienced by African Americans are greater among those tracked from rank and file than elite blue collar jobs. Discussed are implications of the findings for understanding African American disadvantage in the American labor market on both an intra-and inter-generational basis.     

Effects of Family,Friends, and Relative Prices on Fruit and Vegetable Consumption by African Americans

We investigate the effects of parents, best friends, and relative prices on fruit and vegetable consumption by African American youths using behavioral data from the Family and Community Health Study and area‐specific food prices from the Quarterly Food‐at‐Home Price Database. We construct a simultaneous equation ordered probit model that accounts for social interactions in fruit and vegetable consumption and specific aspects of the available food intake data. We estimate statistically significant endogenous consumption effects between a youth and a parent. Lower relative prices tend to increase intakes, particularly in the case of vegetables; however, the statistical significance of these effects is marginal. The results indicate the existence of social multipliers in fruit and vegetable consumption in African American families. The presence of these multipliers supports the design of youth‐parent–based interventions to increase fruit and vegetable intake by African Americans. Additionally, intake also may be increased through relative price reductions.     

Moments of Disparate Peaks: Race-Gender Wage Gaps Among Mature Persons, 1965–2007

This paper examines intertemporal changes in racial disparity among mature Americans during the post-Jim Crow era, that is, 1965–2006. For a large nationally representative sample of American households, we pay special attention to differences between the South and other national regions, as the majority of African Americans do now and always have resided in the South. Historically, periods of progress in African American wellbeing have been followed by periods of regress that are often initiated by some combination of social change, government policy, and macroeconomic instability. Accordingly, we construct an overlapping series of five synthetic intertemporal cohorts of new seniors (ages 50–64). Cohorts are separated by the troughs of recessions. Finally, we note that regardless of race, men and women experience dissimilar opportunities in the market and in society; hence, gender dissimilarity is incorporated into our analysis. We find 1) large reductions in Post-Jim Crow contemporary disparity; 2) we also find large continuing disparity among the most recent cohorts; and, 3) changes in Southern racial weekly wage inequality (especially among men) have been especially important for determining the national pattern.     

Black-White Inequality in Reading and Math Across K-12 Schooling: A Synthetic Cohort Perspective

While much has been written on the racial gap in achievement, few national studies have assessed the gap’s trajectory over K-12 schooling. The reason for this is understandable—most national data sets do not contain respondent information for this entire educational period. I utilize survey data from three national data sets containing White and Black students to document the trajectory of reading and math inequality between school entry and the end of high school. An attempt to clarify these observed patterns is made by assessing changes in the score distributions of these students across grade level, and examining how Black score distributions would fare if held to the White score distributions. Findings suggest that efforts to equalize achievement disparities must not only focus on “bringing the bottom up”, but also on keeping the top Black achievers on pace with the top White achievers across grade level.     

Tides and Prejudice: Racial Attitudes During Downturns in the United States 1979–2014

What happens to racial prejudice during economic downturns? This paper analyzes white attitudes towards African Americans in the United States at different points in a business cycle from 1979 to 2014. Using a number of indicators of hostility towards African Americans available from the General Social Survey we develop an indicator of racial prejudice. We combine this with data on unemployment from the Current Population Survey and find robust evidence that racial hostility as measured by our indicator of prejudice is counter cyclical and rises during periods of higher unemployment for whites. Specifically a one standard deviation in the unemployment rate being experienced by whites is associated with a .03 to.05 standard deviation increase in the discrimination index. This is of a magnitude comparable with one year less of education. We undertake a quantile regression to show that this effect is widespread across the distribution of prejudice and that apart from those with initially low levels of prejudice, increasing own group unemployment results in statistically significant increases of similar magnitude in prejudice across that distribution.     

Racial Identity Production Dynamics and Persisting Wealth Differentials: Integrating Neo-Institutionalist Perspectives into Stratification Economics

This study advances the analysis of factors contributing to the persistence of the black-white racial wealth gap using insights from Institutional Economics and Stratification Economics. The analysis challenges discourses trumpeting the emergence of a post-racial society in which previous barriers to attaining equal economic outcomes have been eliminated. It is argued that the post-racial rhetoric conveys inaccurate information to agents regarding the expected returns from investments in both capital assets and racial identity. Sub-optimal decisions by Black agents result, in part, from failure to take advantage of cultural knowledge about more advantageous investment strategies tied to indigenous cultural traditions.     

Response to “The Subprime Crisis and African Americans” by Sandra Phillips

Lucy Reuben’s Response to “The Subprime Crisis and African Americans” by Sandra Phillips includes an overview of the linkages between historical housing disparities and the adverse wealth gap from which the African American community suffers. Reuben discusses how the subprime mortgage crisis has reduced both African American homeownership and African American access to wealth-building for entrepreneurial development. Finally, Reuben offers policy recommendations related to expanding financial literacy and strengthening regulatory oversight.     

The Effect of Nativity, Ethnicity and Race on the Earnings of Cape Verdean Americans

This paper estimates the net effects of nativity, ethnicity and race on the earnings of Cape Verdean Americans, a small, Afro-European group who speak a Portuguese-based Creole. While in their homeland, most Cape Verdeans identify as mestiço, but in America they are usually perceived as black. The data come from the 2000 US Census and the American Community Survey (2000–2007); Native Born Non-Hispanic Whites and African Americans serve as benchmarks. The results show that, controlling for pre-migration education, foreign birth is not a handicap; indeed, for women it is an advantage. Ethnicity too is never a handicap and occasionally an advantage. Race, on the other hand, penalizes males. Native born Cape Verdean men who identify as “Other”, “Black Other” or “Black” earn significantly less than NBNH Whites. On the other hand, regardless of racial identity, Native born Cape Verdean women earn at least as much as NBNH Whites. Finally, one subgroup of native born Cape Verdean men and women, those who identify racially as “Black”, earn slightly more than African Americans.     

Can ‘Baby Bonds’ Eliminate the Racial Wealth Gap in Putative Post-Racial America?

Despite an enormous and persistent black-white wealth gap, the ascendant American narrative is one that proclaims that our society has transcended the racial divide. The proclamation often is coupled with the claim that remaining disparities are due primarily to dysfunctional behavior on the part of blacks. In such a climate it appears the only acceptable remedial social policies are those that are facially race neutral. However, even without the capacity to redistribute assets directly on the basis of race, our nation still can do so indirectly by judiciously using wealth as the standard for redistributive measures. We offer a bold progressive child development account type program that could go a long way towards eliminating the racial wealth gap.