In a previous post, I cited several studies showing that racial disparities in many important social outcomes are largely driven by racial disparities in cognitive ability. This post will expand on those findings by demonstrating similar patterns in 3 nationally representative datasets that I have not yet considered elsewhere. The datasets include data on socioeconomic outcomes from the early 1990s to early 2010s. I will examine how racial disparities in educational attainment, occupational prestige, and income (the three primary measures of socioeconomic status, as explained here) are related to various factors such as parental income, high school academic achievement, and family structure. My main focus is on disparities between blacks and whites, where I find that the vast majority (over 90%) of the adulthood income gap is explained by some combination of the aforementioned factors, and virtually all of the disparity in educational attainment and occupational prestige are explained by high school achievement.
Tag: race
Racial disparities in intergenerational mobility
In this post, I explore racial disparities in intergenerational mobility, i.e. racial disparities in offspring outcomes after controlling for parental achievement on the same outcome. The primary focus is on black-white disparities in income mobility, i.e. the finding that black children have lower incomes than white children with similar parental incomes. However, other racial groups and socioeconomic outcomes will be considered when data is available. I start by documenting racial disparities in various socioeconomic outcomes, such as income, educational attainment, and wealth. I also show that there are also large racial disparities in mobility for each of these outcomes. Next, I document some of the patterns of income mobility gaps in more detail, by showing the history of the gap, how the gaps vary by sex, and making comparisons with racial groups other than blacks and whites. Following that, I explain why differences in income mobility are pivotal to explaining persistent income gaps between blacks and whites. I then consider a number of different factors that might explain black-white gaps in income mobility. Finally, I end by considering what I take to be important implications of these findings.
Racial preferences at elite American universities
In this post, I explore racial preferences in elite universities in the United States. I’ll start by outlining the basic racial demographics of top universities. Then I’ll compare this data to the demography of top achieving American high schoolers. This comparison highlights the consequences of extreme racial preferences in the admissions process of our elite institutions of higher education. Next, I’ll estimate the demography of top universities after separating Jewish whites and non-Jewish whites. My estimates suggest the surprising finding that non-Jewish whites are perhaps the most under-represented racial group at these elite institutions.
Following that, I’ll review studies that attempt to quantify the magnitude and patterns of racial preferences at selective universities. These reviews reveal the surprising finding that elite universities have little to no preferences for low-SES or low-income applicants. Next, I briefly cite a few reviews of affirmative action case law, in order to understand the primary legal defenses of racial preferences that have been presented by selective universities in landmark Supreme Court cases. The review of affirmative action case law leaves me with a few important questions which I believe have not been adequately addressed by elite universities. Finally, I end the post explaining why racial preferences at elite universities are important.
The black-white cognitive ability gap and social outcomes
Most people are aware that there are significant disparities between blacks and whites in the United States with regard to a wide range of important social outcomes, including crime, income, education, poverty, welfare usage, etc. For almost every measurable metric of important life outcomes, blacks perform significantly worse than whites. In this post, I will cite studies showing that many of these disparities are likely caused by the significant cognitive differences between blacks and whites. I begin by illustrating a few examples of the disparities between blacks and whites with respect to important life outcomes. Then I briefly review evidence demonstrating the predictive validity and causal influence of cognitive ability for these outcomes. Next, I present data illustrating the scope and magnitude of the black-white cognitive ability gap. Finally, I provide evidence indicating that many of the aforementioned disparities between blacks and whites are (mostly) eliminated after controlling for youth cognitive ability.
Poor environmental explanations of the black-white cognitive ability gap
In this post, I will consider some of the most commonly posited explanations of the black-white cognitive ability gap. Firstly, I consider what I call the Test Bias Hypothesis, which posits that black-white differences in cognitive test scores are the result of biased tests rather than genuine differences in cognitive ability. Secondly, I consider the Schooling Hypothesis, which holds that the cognitive ability gap is the result of differences in schooling between blacks and whites. Finally, I consider the Socioeconomic Hypothesis, which affirms that the cognitive ability gap is the result of the SES gap. I will argue that each of these hypotheses fail to adequately account for the cognitive ability gap. The predictions made by each of these hypotheses (insofar as they make predictions) are consistently falsified by the preponderance of data.
The magnitude and scope of black crime
The purpose of this post is to cite the extent of black crime around the world. The first section is concerned with black crime in the United States. This section should not be terribly surprising to most people since I assume (hope) most people are aware that black people are disproportionately engaged in crime in the United States. I believe the latter two sections contain information that most people are not aware of. The second section covers misconduct among black children in the United States. The third and final section covers black crime and misconduct outside of the United States. The last two sections, especially the last section, will probably be educational for the vast majority of people reading this post. If not, the post at the very least serves as a useful fact sheet for those interested in this topic.
The early emergence of black-white disparities
Most people are aware of the significant disparities between blacks and whites regarding a wide range of important social outcomes, including crime, income, education, poverty, welfare usage, etc. I have written extensively on racial disparities in crime and on the degree to which disparities in IQ explain many of the important racial disparities. In this post, I will review studies and data that show that many of these disparities appear extremely early. Specifically, I will show that disparities in IQ, cognitive skills, misconduct, and self-regulation appear extremely early in life. For each of these categories, I will show that we find black-white disparities at pre-school age or even earlier. The general pattern for these disparities is that they gradually grow as children age, until the magnitude of the disparities eventually mirror the gaps that we find between black and white adults.
Police killings and black crime
In light of the killing of George Floyd, there has been much discussion regarding anti-black bias in the criminal justice system (CJS) in the United States. It seems to me that the mainstream assumption is that the disproportionate police killings of black people is strong evidence of an anti-black bias in the CJS. My goal in this post is to refute this assumption. I believe that an honest and impartial assessment of all of the relevant data provides strong reason to deny that the disproportionate police killings of blacks is evidence of anti-black bias. I will argue that the best explanation of disproportionate police killings against blacks doesn’t involve any appeal to an anti-black bias. The best explanation consists in the fact that black people disproportionately engage in criminal activity and the fact that the police disproportionately kill criminals.
Exploring two common explanations of the black-white crime gap
The purpose of this post is to explore two commonly hypothesized explanations of the high levels of criminality in the black population. The first explanation states that high rates of black crime is primarily the result of systemic racism against blacks. The second explanation states that high rates of black crime is primarily the result of the structural or socioeconomic circumstances that black people find themselves in. I will present data that should prompt skepticism of both of these explanations. I’ll begin by describing racial differences in crime.
Studies attempting to explain the black-white crime gap
In a previous post, I provided reasons to be skeptical of SES-based explanations of black criminality. This post provides studies that attempt to more rigorously examine the relationship between SES and black criminality. At the city and state level, crime is more strongly associated with the presence of blacks than it is with low-SES conditions. At the neighborhood level, studies suggest that controlling for SES can statistically account for a moderate portion of the black-white gaps in crime (although findings are mixed on the magnitude of the explained gap). Regardless, as I will argue below, such studies cannot demonstrate causality. That is, they cannot demonstrate that racial differences in neighborhood SES cause any portion of the racial gap in crime.