IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp5120.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Skin Tone's Decreasing Importance on Employment: Evidence from a Longitudinal Dataset, 1985-2000

Author

Listed:
  • Akee, Randall K. Q.

    (University of California, Los Angeles)

  • Yuksel, Mutlu

    (Dalhousie University)

Abstract

We investigate the effect of skin tone on employment probabilities in a longitudinal data set. Using an objective measure of skin tone from a light-spectrometer and a self-reported measure of race we find that over time the effect of skin tone on employment has diminished. These results hold both across the white and African-American samples as well as within the African-American sample itself with regard to skin tone. Further investigation indicates that all of the gains can be attributed to African-American women; there are no changes in the employment probabilities for African-American men in the 15 year panel data. We find that the expansion of employment for women is concentrated in the services occupations.

Suggested Citation

  • Akee, Randall K. Q. & Yuksel, Mutlu, 2010. "Skin Tone's Decreasing Importance on Employment: Evidence from a Longitudinal Dataset, 1985-2000," IZA Discussion Papers 5120, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
  • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5120
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp5120.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Derek Neal, 2004. "The Measured Black-White Wage Gap among Women Is Too Small," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(S1), pages 1-28, February.
    2. Neal, Derek A & Johnson, William R, 1996. "The Role of Premarket Factors in Black-White Wage Differences," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(5), pages 869-895, October.
    3. O'Neill, June & Polachek, Solomon, 1993. "Why the Gender Gap in Wages Narrowed in the 1980s," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 11(1), pages 205-228, January.
    4. Casey B. Mulligan & Yona Rubinstein, 2005. "Selection, Investment, and Women's Relative Wages Since 1975," NBER Working Papers 11159, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Srikant Devaraj & Pankaj C. Patel, 2017. "Skin Tone and Self-Employment: is there an Intra-Group Variation among Blacks?," The Review of Black Political Economy, Springer;National Economic Association, vol. 44(1), pages 137-166, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence Kahn & Nikolai Boboshko & Matthew Comey, 2021. "Th Impact of Selection into the Labor Force on the Gender Wage Gap," CESifo Working Paper Series 9103, CESifo.
    2. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 2006. "The U.S. Gender Pay Gap in the 1990S: Slowing Convergence," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 60(1), pages 45-66, October.
    3. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 2017. "The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(3), pages 789-865, September.
    4. repec:pri:indrel:dsp01gb19f581g is not listed on IDEAS
    5. John S. Heywood & Daniel Parent, 2012. "Performance Pay and the White-Black Wage Gap," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 30(2), pages 249-290.
    6. Randall Akee & Mutlu Yuksel, 2012. "The Decreasing Effect of Skin Tone on Women's Full-Time Employment," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 65(2), pages 398-426, April.
    7. Kevin Lang & Jee-Yeon K. Lehmann, 2012. "Racial Discrimination in the Labor Market: Theory and Empirics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 50(4), pages 959-1006, December.
    8. Bond, Timothy N. & Lehmann, Jee-Yeon K., 2018. "Prejudice and racial matches in employment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 271-293.
    9. Kevin Lang & Michael Manove, 2011. "Education and Labor Market Discrimination," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(4), pages 1467-1496, June.
    10. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 2011. "Substitution Between Individual and Cultural Capital: Pre-Migration Labor Supply, Culture and US Labor Market Outcomes Among Immigrant Women," NBER Working Papers 17275, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Carneiro, Pedro & Heckman, James J & Masterov, Dimitriy V, 2005. "Labor Market Discrimination and Racial Differences in Premarket Factors," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 48(1), pages 1-39, April.
    12. Peter McHenry & Melissa McInerney, 2015. "Estimating Hispanic-White Wage Gaps Among Women: The Importance of Controlling for Cost of Living," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 36(3), pages 249-273, September.
    13. Roland G. Fryer, Jr. & Devah Pager & Jörg L. Spenkuch, 2013. "Racial Disparities in Job Finding and Offered Wages," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(3), pages 633-689.
    14. Aeberhardt, Romain & Pouget, Julien, 2007. "National Origin Wage Differentials in France: Evidence from Matched Employer-Employee Data," IZA Discussion Papers 2779, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Fortin, Nicole & Lemieux, Thomas & Firpo, Sergio, 2011. "Decomposition Methods in Economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 1, pages 1-102, Elsevier.
    16. Mary Kate Batistich & Timothy N Bond, 2023. "Stalled Racial Progress and Japanese Trade in the 1970s and 1980s," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 90(6), pages 2792-2821.
    17. Seonho Shin, 2022. "To work or not? Wages or subsidies?: Copula-based evidence of subsidized refugees’ negative selection into employment," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 63(4), pages 2209-2252, October.
    18. Huoying Wu, 2007. "Can The Human Capital Approach Explain Life‐Cycle Wage Differentials Between Races And Sexes?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 45(1), pages 24-39, January.
    19. Neal, Derek, 2006. "Why Has Black-White Skill Convergence Stopped?," Handbook of the Economics of Education, in: Erik Hanushek & F. Welch (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Education, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 9, pages 511-576, Elsevier.
    20. D’Haultfœuille, Xavier & Maurel, Arnaud & Zhang, Yichong, 2018. "Extremal quantile regressions for selection models and the black–white wage gap," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 203(1), pages 129-142.
    21. William J. Collins & Michael Q. Moody, 2017. "Racial Differences in American Women's Labor Market Outcomes: A Long-Run View," NBER Working Papers 23397, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    employment discrimination; skin tone; race; gender; panel data;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5120. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.