Race,amenities, and psychic income

Even when there are no racial wage differences between black and white faculty in institutions of higher learning in the Deep South, there are significant racial differences in amenities such that the psychic income of blacks is lower than that of whites. It is demonstrated that black faculty will tend to have higher turnover rates than whites if racial discrepancies in amenities exist. The maintenance of old traditions that affect job satisfaction of blacks acts as a margin to neutralize integration efforts. The assumption that equal pay is equivalent to equal opportunity is challenged.     

Provider Availability,Race, and Abortion Demand

Variations in the availability of abortion providers may impact the demand for abortions since greater provider availability reduces the travel cost associated with obtaining an abortion. This paper applies a fertility-control model to estimate the responsiveness of abortion demand to travel-cost variations using individual data from all births and abortions of women over age 20 in the state of Texas for 1993. The probability that a pregnant woman chooses an abortion appears to be sensitive to availability-induced variations in the travel cost of abortion services. Controlling for the endogeneity of travel distance, the results suggest that pregnant women who reside in counties with longer travel distances to the nearest abortion provider have lower probabilities of aborting their pregnancies than women in counties closer to abortion providers. Simulations show that changes in travel distance will have relatively large impacts on overall abortion rates and, furthermore, that these effects vary across race. In addition, these simulations show substantial differences by race in the effects of changes in other explanatory variables.     

Estimating net lottery revenues for states

Based on 1980–95 data, this paper estimates and forecasts net lottery revenues for states with and without lotteries. This study indicates that a multi-state estimation is improved when a time-series and cross-section technique is used. Forecasting results are also improved when unequal time series in the data and less-than-full first years of operating lottery are controlled. For states without lotteries, the time-series and cross-section estimation indicates that only two of 14 states without a lottery would have generated net lottery revenue of more than $100 million. The number increases to five of 14 in the cross-section estimation.     

Poverty impacts of natural resource revenues

This study analyzes the effects on poverty incidence and other variables resulting from government expenditures associated with natural resource revenues, using Laos as a case study. The analysis uses a multi-sector/multi-household general equilibrium model of the Lao economy. The conceptual framework emphasizes the distinction between official and marginal expenditures financed by project revenues. A range of assumptions is considered regarding the direct distributional impact of the true marginal expenditures and their implications are compared. Poverty incidence declines under the entire range of distributional assumptions, but the most important determinant of these impacts is the degree of pro-rural bias.     

Housing, Race, and Recovery from Hurricane Katrina

The destruction of private and public housing in New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina was greatest among African Americans due to historic settlement patterns. Data for 13 planning districts within Orleans Parish (the city of New Orleans proper) that document the extent of housing destruction, the distribution of population by race, and the share of returned population at 2 and 5 year points across these planning districts are evaluated using correlation analysis. The finding is that the return of African Americans to New Orleans is significantly less than that of other groups and is associated with the greater housing destruction in neighborhoods with the highest percentages of African Americans. An analysis of the structure and impact of the Road Home program for private housing and of the initiatives of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Housing Authority of New Orleans provides evidence of racial discriminatory policies and practices that contributed to the racial disparity in the African American return to New Orleans. It is suggested that political leaders paid more attention to the interests of developers and big businesses in the restoration of New Orleans than to the interests of the predominantly black working class in the city.     

Race and wealth

One of the most heated scholarly controversies in the area of racial equality and social justice in the 1980s has been the dispute over the nature, cause, and meaning of economic changes occurring within the black community. Although this debate has important public policy consequences, most of the research on which the debate is based is concerned with income. We argue that a broader interpretation of life chances should include an examination of wealth as well as income. Using the 1984 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), we examine black and white patterns of wealth inequality. Our analysis uncovers a depth of inequality beyond that which is found when income alone is considered. Furthermore, we find that both race and class are important in determining patterns of racial inequalities in wealth.     

Race,Restrictive State Abortion Laws and Abortion Demand

A disproportionately large number of abortions are performed on black and Hispanic women. This study empirically investigates whether restrictive state abortion laws differentially affect the abortion demand of white, black and Hispanic women for the year 2005. A state Medicaid abortion funding restriction significantly decreases the abortion rate of all three races. However, Hispanic women’s abortion demand is more sensitive to a Medicaid funding restriction than either white women or black women. Parental involvement laws and mandatory counseling laws have no significant impact on the abortion rates of the three racial groups. Two-visit laws are associated with a significant decrease in the abortion rate of white women, but have no significant effect on the abortion rates of black and Hispanic women.     

Sex,Race, and Job Satisfaction Among Highly Educated Workers

There has been a considerable amount of work focusing on job satisfaction and sex, generally finding that women are more satisfied than men despite having objectively worse job conditions. But there is little evidence on whether job satisfaction differs by race or ethnicity. We use data from the 2010 National Survey of College Graduates to examine the relation between job satisfaction and race and ethnicity among Asian, black, Hispanic/Latino, and white workers. Overall job satisfaction does not differ by sex among college graduates. Relative to white workers of the same sex, Asian and black workers are far less satisfied. The lower satisfaction of Asian and black workers relative to white workers is not explained by immigrant status, job match, or other individual or job characteristics.     

Race, Inequality, and Anti-Chinese Violence in the Netherlands Indies

Movements in wages for subjects of the Netherlands Indies for the period 1908-1917 are analyzed. The analysis reveals a sharp increase in inequality between the ethnic indigenous and Chinese communities between 1910 and 1916, the period of the birth and rise of the anti-Chinese Sarekat Islam movements in Java. It also reveals that this inequality was most severe in a number of residencies of Java, where the movements first took hold. While there is statistical evidence of a link between interracial wage differentials and anti-Chinese violence, there is no link between absolute wages and violence. This evidence suggests that “relative deprivation” is important in understanding ethnic tension.     

Race and prosecution expenditures

There has been a steady accumulation of literature on racial differentials in crime and the response of the criminal justice system. A neglected component of societal response to crime has been the volume of prosecution expenditures. This article seeks to repair this neglect by examining state level difference inper capita prosecution expenditures in 1980 using a multiple regression equation. The results show that, holding other factors constant, lower prosecution expenditures are associated with higher percentages of blacks in a state’s population. The relationship of this to discrimination is discussed in terms of England.