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Title: Disentangling skin-color discrimination from family background differences among African-Americans, 19101930

Citation Type: Working Paper

Publication Year: 2012

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Abstract: Evidence points to a significant and persistent wage gap between whites and blacks in the U.S. This gap could be attributed to discrimination, but it can also be driven by systematic differences in human capital that are correlated with race. An important determinant of human capital is family background. This paper disentangles discrimination from family background by comparing siblings who were coded by census enumerators asmore or less black. We locate brothers in households that in 1910 had some sons coded as Black while others as Mulatto and we link them to the 1930 census. We then assess the extent to which brothers differ on educational outcomes in childhood and economic outcomes in adulthood. We find that outcome differences between brothers are much smaller than those between Mulattoes and Blacks selected randomly from the population. Still, darker-skinned brothers are less likely to attend school in early childhood and are also less likely to be literate. Overall, our findings suggest that systematic differences in family background account for most of the educational and economic gaps observed in the population.

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Authors: Stein, Luke; Mill, Roy

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Institution: Stanford University

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Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Race and Ethnicity

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