Women,Ecology and Economics,edited by Ellie Perkins

This paper finds that black women earn 7 percent less than similarly skilled white women because of their race. Even within the same occupational category, black women earn 3 percent less than similarly qualified white women. Black women receive lower pay primarily due to occupational segregation and because they are rewarded with lower earnings than white women for equivalent levels of education and other human capital characteristics.     

Differences in Work Hours and Hours Preferences by Race in the U.S.

Significant differences exist in actual and preferred work hours by race. Specifically, black males work 20 percent fewer annual hours than white males. The differences between black and white women are small. Black workers are significantly more likely than white workers to prefer additional work and fewer are satisfied with their current hours of work. I use the hours-inequality hypothesis of Bell and Freeman (1995,1997) to evaluate the extent to which race differences in work hours and hours preferences are related to race differences in incentives. I demonstrate that whereas white workers work longer hours in response to overall wage variation in their relevant labor market cell, black workers react to the wage variation among black workers but not to the variation overall. The fact that labor market incentives are different for otherwise similar black and white workers is difficult to reconcile with standard competitive theory.     

Gender wage differentials and discrimination in the New South Africa

Research into discrimination within South Africa (SA) has focused on racial issues, with gender issues being largely ignored. This study aims to estimate gender wage differentials and through decomposition analysis understand the different problems faced by white, black, coloured and Indian/Asian in 1995. It is found that white and Asian females suffer greater gender discrimination than their black and coloured counterparts, which could be a signal to future problems black and coloured females may encounter. The largest gender wage differential is faced by white females, whilst the lowest is encountered by coloured and black females. A possible explanation for this finding is the low (subsistence) wages that the black and coloured population groups command relative to other population groups.     

The impact of EEOC enforcement on the wages of black and white women: does class matter?

The procedures used by the EEOC have been broadly criticized. The critiques are that the EEOC does not completely investigate all charges, and does not apply the law to the fullest benefit of discrimination victims. This paper contributes to these critiques with a finding that, among women, benefits from EEOC enforcement are funneled to white women and black women with relatively high levels of education. This distribution of benefits is due to the EEOC’s investigation procedures.     

The Introduction of Automatic Switching into the Bell System: Market versus Institutional Influences

The use of height data to measure living standards is now a well-established method in the economic literature. While much is known about nineteenth century Southern black legal and material conditions, less is known about how their nineteenth century biological conditions were related to institutional change and the physical environment. Average Southern black statures ironically increased during the antebellum period and declined — at least temporarily - after emancipation. On the other hand, average Southern white statures declined throughout the nineteenth century. It is geography and direct sunlight (insolation) that present an additional attribute of nineteenth century black and white stature, and greater insolation is documented here to be associated with taller black and white statures.     

Tax distortions, household production, and black-market work

This paper studies an economy with high- and low-productivity households. Household services are produced either by households themselves or are purchased in a white or black market. Black market work is inefficient (efficient) when it otherwise would have been done in the white market (within the household). With low (high) tax wedges, the black market reduces (increases) welfare by competing with white-market production (own-household production). With intermediate tax wedges, the welfare effect of a black market is ambiguous: welfare is improved (reduced) when black services are demanded by low- (high-) productivity households. An increase in the tax wedge may then reduce the benefits from a black service market.     

The Wealth Dynamics of Entrepreneurship for Black and White Families in the U.S.

Among black and white families, entrepreneurs hold disproportionately more wealth than workers. Black entrepreneurs hold a lower fraction of black family wealth than white entrepreneurs hold of white family wealth, because black families have a lower rate of entrepreneurship. Black and white entrepreneurs have more upward and less downward mobility in the wealth distribution than black and white workers, respectively. The black entrepreneurs and white entrepreneurs have similar upward mobility and black entrepreneurs less downward mobility in the wealth distribution. The entrepreneurs save at higher rates than workers, and the saving rates of black entrepreneurs and white entrepreneurs are not found to differ.     

Discrimination and Skill Differences in an Equilibrium Search Model*

We analyze an equilibrium search model with three sources for wage and unemployment differentials among workers with the same (observed) human capital but different appearance (race): unobserved productivity, search intensities, and discrimination due to an appearance‐based employer disutility factor. We show that the structural parameters are identified using labor market survey data. Estimation results for a black and white high school graduate sample imply: black productivity is 3.3% lower than white productivity; the employer's disutility factor is 31% of the white's productivity level; and 56% of firms have a disutility factor toward blacks.     

The human capital of black soldiers during the American Civil War

Analyzing three datasets on black and white soldiers and the black and white populations from the same birth years, this paper finds that black soldiers during the American Civil War had much higher human capital than the black population.     

Parental Wealth and the Black–White Mobility Gap in the U.S.

Utilizing longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), this paper examines the relationship between parental wealth and intergenerational income mobility for black and white families. I find that total parental wealth is positively associated with upward mobility for low‐income white families, but is not associated with reduced likelihood of downward mobility for white families from the top half of the income distribution. Conversely, I find that total parental wealth does not have the same positive association for low‐income black families, while home ownership may have negative associations with the likelihood of upward mobility for these families. However, for black families from the top half of the income distribution, home equity is associated with a decreased likelihood of downward mobility, suggesting a heterogeneous relationship between home ownership and mobility for black families.     

Socioeconomic Effects on the Stature of Nineteenth-Century US Women

Using a new source of nineteenth-century state prison records and robust statistics, this study contrasts the effects of social conditions on the stature of comparable African American and white women during the economic development of the United States. Across the stature distribution, Great Lakes, Plains, and Southern women were taller than women with other US and international nativities. Women from the Northeast and Middle Atlantic were the shortest within the US, but were taller than British and European immigrants. White women were consistently taller than black women. Stature also varied over time with industrialization and emancipation. Across the stature distribution, women in outdoor, unskilled occupations were taller than women in indoor, skilled occupations. These results show that US women's average statures reflect net nutritional conditions that are not available in traditional measures of economic well-being.     

Why so only 5.5% of Black Men Marry White Women?*

Only 5.5% of black males married white females in 1990, and the family‐income premium for intermarried black males was 7%. This article estimates the impact of the mating taboo, courting opportunities, and individual endowments on the black male marriage market. Results indicate that eliminating the mating taboo would raise the intermarriage rate from 5.5 to 64%, and do away with the intermarriage premium. Improving black males' endowments or allowing black males to meet white females as frequently as they do black females would not increase intermarriage.     

Black–white wage differentials: duration and probability unemployment effects in a multiple of sample selection bias model

The extent to which probability and duration of unemployment affect the black–white wage differentials is examined in this paper. The paper simultaneously incorporates in the wage equation the multiple sample selection bias that occurs as a result of individuals’ propensity to be in the labor force, and the firm’s hiring decisions. The results reveal a substantial contribution of the duration of unemployment variable to the black–white wage differential, but a small portion of the differential is explained by the probability of unemployment. The results also indicate a sizeable difference between the contribution of the duration of unemployment variable to the male’s wage differentials (26%) and to the female’s (35%). The study finds that an individual’s labor force decision as well as a firm’s hiring decision are important in the wage determination process and that failure to account for the sample selectivity bias due to these two decisions will result in either underestimating or overestimating the wage differentials between black and white workers. At the macro level, the results seem to suggest that promotion of racial wage equality should be associated with policies that will minimize blacks’ incidence of unemployment and duration of unemployment spells.     

Measuring the extent of earnings discrimination: an update

Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and data from the March 1990 Current Population Survey are used to estimate yearly earnings averages for white males, white females, black males and black females. In order to test for the possible existence or gender and/or race discrimination, earnings estimates are decomposed, using the tradional Oaxaca (1973) and Blinder (1973) methodology. In comparing these results with those from Carlson and Swartz (1988, using 1979 data), we find that overall and unexplained residual differences have declined quite substantially, but that they still favour white males. We then incorporate an extension of the traditional methodology (Jackson and Lindley, 1989) which allows for testing for the significance of enexplained residuals, and for jointly testing for the significance of residual effect components, the constant and coefficient effects. These results call into question the unambiguous conclusion that earnings differentials uniformly favour white males. Strong support is found for the Jackson–Lindley contention that significant and positive residuals may have have offsetting signs. More specifically, where males appear to receive an entry level premium, as measured by constant effect differentials, but other groups appear to receive favourable treatment as measured by response rates to changes in independent variables (the coefficient effect). This result suggests that efforts may be underway to ‘make up’ for the entry level white male premium.     

Flexible Hours,Workplace Authority,and Compensating Wage Differentials in the US

The theory of compensating differentials suggests that workers with flexible schedules will earn less than other workers. Some authors have also contended that the concentration of women in jobs with flexible hours explains a significant part of the gender pay gap. This paper uses data from the US subset of the Comparative Project in Class Analysis to test these hypotheses. These data first indicate that, contrary to popular wisdom, women workers do not have more flexible schedules than men. Second, the really striking differential is by race: black workers have much more rigid schedules than white workers. Third, workers with more authority at the workplace typically have more flexibility than subordinate workers. Finally, the data show that any compensating differentials for flexible hours are small and are offset by returns to workplace authority.     

Race,Gender and Regional Labor Market Inequalities in Brazil

This study investigates the relationship between unequal regional development and racial and gender wage inequality in Brazil. Using sample data from the 1991 Brazilian census, I estimated monthly wages for a white, brown and black women and men working in the states of S"o Paulo and Bahia. The findings suggest that while women and Afro-Brazilians in Brazil's most developed region of S"o Paulo had the advantages of higher levels of state sponsored work benefits and more equitable occupational and wage distribution, they nevertheless experienced the greatest discrimination. In contrast, the less developed state of Bahia where racial and gender gaps in education, occupation and wages were the most severe, wage discrimination was lowest.     

The veteran wage differential

There is debate in the literature as to whether military service is rewarded in the economy and the extent to which veterans receive either a wage premium or penalty. In this paper, we take a new approach to this question by conducting a wage decomposition of the veteran wage differential and decomposing the wage distribution of veterans and civilians instead of focusing only on the standard wage gap analysis at the averages. We find the veteran wage differential is driven by observable factors such as education, occupation, and industry, but also by location choice, a factor that has been previously overlooked in the literature. At the average, we find white men experience a veteran penalty whereas black men and women experience a veteran premium consistent with the bridging hypothesis. Additionally, we find that as we move along the wage distribution for all demographic groups, the veteran premium tends to become a veteran penalty, even after accounting for selection into military service. However, once we account for selection, we find that the premium for veteran black men disappears.     

Interior immigration enforcement policy and the subjective well-being of US residents: evidence from secure communities

There were increased efforts to enhance interior enforcement of immigration laws in the United States in recent years. Considering that more interior immigration enforcement measures are going to be proposed in the near future, there is a need to evaluate whether such policy can achieve its objective and imparts some benefits to the population it is supposed to help. In this article, I examine the impact of one of the largest interior immigration enforcement effort – Secure Communities – on the subjective well-being of US residents. The analyses show that there is no evidence that Secure Communities statistically significantly increased the proportion of white or black non-Hispanics reporting that they were satisfied with their life. Evaluated at the mean, at 10% significance level, the results suggest that I can rule out an effect size larger than 0.5% and 1% for white and black non-Hispanics, respectively. Since only a small share of white or black non-Hispanics are foreign-born, this finding suggests that the benefit of Secure Communities to US-born individuals that are coming through an increase in their life satisfaction is not economically large.     

THE IMPACT OF FEMALE WORK ON FAMILY INCOME DISTRIBUTION IN THE UNITED STATES: BLACK-WHITE DIFFERENTIALS*

Using data from the 1973 National Survey of Family Growth, the present study analyzes, for blacks and whites separately, the impact of female market activity on the inequality of the income distribution among households. The family life cycle is divided into three stages, according to the presence and age of children: (1) the interval between marriage and the birth of the first child, (2) the child-rearing interval, and (3) a final period which begins when all the children have reached school age. Using the coefficient of variation as an indicator of inequality, the empirical results show that in period 1, the contribution of white working wives has a large equalizing impact, while that of their black counterparts results in a slight increase in dispersion. In the child-rearing and post child-rearing stages, the labor supply of mothers decreases family income inequality by a small amount for both black and white households. A decomposition of the squared coefficient of variation of family income is presented to aid in the interpretation of these findings.