The Differing Nature of Black-White Wage Inequality Across Occupational Sectors

A-Tier
Journal: Journal of Human Resources
Year: 2007
Volume: 42
Issue: 2

Score contribution per author:

4.022 = (α=2.01 / 1 authors) × 2.0x A-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

The nature of racial wage inequality appears to differ across occupation sectors. Specifically, I find that all of the racial wage inequality in the white-collar job sector can be accounted for by controlling for the academic skill level of each worker, but almost half of the overall racial wage inequality remains in the blue-collar sector after controlling for each worker’s academic skill. Relatedly, after controlling for academic skill, I find that black workers are actually more likely to work in the white-collar sector than white workers. I show that these findings are consistent, and arguably directly implied by, both preference-based and statistical-based models of discrimination. However, omitted variable bias and measurement error also cannot be ruled out as possible explanations.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:uwp:jhriss:v:42:y:2007:i2:p398-434
Journal Field
Labor
Author Count
1
Added to Database
2026-01-24