Race,Gender, and Familial Status: Discrimination in One US Mortgage Lending Market

This paper, using data from the 1992 Boston Federal Reserve study of mortgage lending, reports preliminary evidence of patterns of gender and familial status discrimination that differ markedly by race in the US. White couples with children experienced familial status discrimination if the female partner was in the labor market, but not if she was at home raising her children. However, African-American or Hispanic couples with children suffered familial status discrimination if she stayed home to raise her children, but much less so, if at all, if she was in the labor market. This pattern of racial differentiation may reflect social norms dating back to slavery that have favored labor force participation for African-American and Hispanic mothers but not white mothers. On the other hand, it was true across racial groups that single women, more than single men, were disadvantaged in the mortgage market by children.