IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedker/95389.html

Lifetime Earnings Differences across Black and White Individuals: Years Worked Matter

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew Glover
  • José Mustre-del-Río
  • Emily Pollard

Abstract

In this article, Andrew Glover, José Mustre-del-Río, and Emily Pollard go beyond point-in-time measures of earnings and examine lifetime earnings differences between Black and white individuals. They find that, on average, Black individuals earn about one-third less than white individuals over the course of their lifetimes (a difference equivalent to about $550,000), though the size of this gap varies by sex and education level. In addition, they find that differences in years worked, which are not captured by point-in-time measures, contribute substantially to earnings differences between Black and white individuals.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew Glover & José Mustre-del-Río & Emily Pollard, 2022. "Lifetime Earnings Differences across Black and White Individuals: Years Worked Matter," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, vol. 108(no.1), December.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedker:95389
    DOI: 10.18651/ER/v108n1GloverMustredelRioPollard
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.kansascityfed.org/Economic%20Review/documents/9276/EconomicReviewV108N1GloverMustredelRioPollard.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.18651/ER/v108n1GloverMustredelRioPollard?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marianne Bertrand & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(4), pages 991-1013, September.
    2. Juhn, Chinhui & Murphy, Kevin M & Pierce, Brooks, 1993. "Wage Inequality and the Rise in Returns to Skill," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(3), pages 410-442, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Nicodemo, Catia & Raya, Josep M., 2018. "Does Juan Carlos or Nelson Obtain a Larger Price Cut in the Spanish Housing Market?," IZA Discussion Papers 11811, IZA Network @ LISER.
    2. Judith K. Hellerstein & David Neumark, 2008. "Workplace Segregation in the United States: Race, Ethnicity, and Skill," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(3), pages 459-477, August.
    3. Ross Levine & Alexey Levkov & Yona Rubinstein, 2008. "Racial Discrimination and Competition," NBER Working Papers 14273, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Levine, Ross & Rubinstein, Yona & Levkov, Alexey, 2014. "Bank Deregulation and Racial Inequality in America," Critical Finance Review, now publishers, vol. 3(1), pages 1-48, January.
    5. Martin Huber, 2015. "Causal Pitfalls in the Decomposition of Wage Gaps," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(2), pages 179-191, April.
    6. Janet Gao & Wenting Ma & Qiping Xu, 2023. "Access to Financing and Racial Pay Gap Inside Firms," Working Papers 23-36, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    7. Atsuko Tanaka, "undated". "Estimation of the Effects of Statistical Discrimination on the Gender Wage Gap," Working Papers 2015-22, Department of Economics, University of Calgary, revised 21 Dec 2015.
    8. Stephen J. Trejo, 2003. "Intergenerational Progress of Mexican-Origin Workers in the U.S. Labor Market," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 38(3).
    9. Jae Song & David J Price & Fatih Guvenen & Nicholas Bloom & Till von Wachter, 2019. "Firming Up Inequality," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(1), pages 1-50.
    10. Chowdhury, Shyamal & Ooi, Evarn & Slonim, Robert, 2017. "Racial discrimination and white first name adoption: a field experiment in the Australian labour market," Working Papers 2017-15, University of Sydney, School of Economics.
    11. Joanna Tyrowicz & Lucas van der Velde, 2017. "When the opportunity knocks: large structural shocks and gender wage gaps," GRAPE Working Papers 2, GRAPE Group for Research in Applied Economics.
    12. Marlene Kim, 2020. "Intersectionality and Gendered Racism in the United States: A New Theoretical Framework," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 52(4), pages 616-625, December.
    13. Mujcic, Redzo & Frijters, Paul, 2013. "Still Not Allowed on the Bus: It Matters If You're Black or White!," IZA Discussion Papers 7300, IZA Network @ LISER.
    14. Ramachandran, Rajesh & Rustagi, Devesh & Soldani, Emilia, 2025. "Discrimination by Teachers: Role of Attitudes, Beliefs, and Empathy," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 743, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    15. Coral del Río Otero & Carlos Gradín Lago & Olga Cantó Sánchez, 2004. "El enfoque distributivo en el análisis de la discriminación salarial por razón de género," Working Papers 0405, Universidade de Vigo, Departamento de Economía Aplicada.
    16. repec:spo:wpecon:info:hdl:2441/eu4vqp9ompqllr09i8hjg0kpi is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Zsófia L. Bárány, 2016. "The Minimum Wage and Inequality: The Effects of Education and Technology," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(1), pages 237-274.
    18. Anthony Edo & Nicolas Jacquemet & Constantine Yannelis, 2019. "Language skills and homophilous hiring discrimination: Evidence from gender and racially differentiated applications," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 349-376, March.
    19. Hunt, Jennifer & Laszlo, Sonia, 2005. "Bribery: Who Pays, Who Refuses, What are the Payoffs?," CEPR Discussion Papers 5251, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    20. Richard V. Burkhauser & Shuaizhang Feng & Stephen P. Jenkins, 2009. "Using The P90/P10 Index To Measure U.S. Inequality Trends With Current Population Survey Data: A View From Inside The Census Bureau Vaults," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 55(1), pages 166-185, March.
    21. Brock, J Michelle, 2018. "Inequality of opportunity, governance and individual beliefs," CEPR Discussion Papers 12636, Centre for Economic Policy Research.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J3 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination

    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:fip:fedker:95389. 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: Kira Lillard (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbkcus.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.