Prejudice and wages: An empirical assessment of Becker's the economics of discrimination

Kerwin Kofi Charles; Jonathan Guryan

doi:10.1086/593073

Prejudice and wages: An empirical assessment of Becker's the economics of discrimination

Kerwin Kofi Charles, Jonathan Guryan

School of Education and Social Policy

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

224 Scopus citations

Abstract

We test the predictions from Becker's (1957) seminal work on employer prejudice and find that relative black wages (a) vary negatively with the prejudice of the "marginal" white in a state, (b) vary negatively with the prejudice in the lower tail of the prejudice distribution but are unaffected by the prejudice of the most prejudiced persons in a state, and (c) vary negatively with the fraction of a state that is black. Our estimates suggest that one-quarter of the racial wage gap is due to prejudice, with nontrivial consequences for black lifetime earnings.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	773-778
Number of pages	6
Journal	Journal of Political Economy
Volume	116
Issue number	5
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1086/593073
State	Published - Oct 2008

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Economics and Econometrics

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10.1086/593073

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Prejudice and wages: An empirical assessment of Becker's the economics of discrimination

Abstract

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