Persistent Advantage or Disadvantage?: Evidence in Support of the Intergenerational Drag Hypothesis - Statistical Data Included

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The,  April, 2001  by William Darity Jr.,  Jason Dietrich,  David K. Guilkey

• E-mail
• Print
• Link

Groups with consistently comparatively high mean OCCSCORE include, among whites, males of Austrian and Russian ancestry. Persons identified in the censuses as being of Russian ancestry overlap fairly closely with the Jewish population in the United States (Rosenthal 1975). By 1940 both Russian ancestry males and females were achieving the highest occupational status measures within their respective gender groups. Furthermore, the census data does not enable researchers to partition the Irish population, whose OCCSCORE typically is slightly above the mean for each gender, between Catholics and Protestants. Irish Catholics, as noted above, tend to achieve greater economic success than Irish Protestants (Greeley 1981) contrary to the prediction of Max Weber's (1930) famous hypothesis.

Note also the decline in OCCSCORE among "American" American whites for both males and females between 1970 and 1990. We attribute this to the change in the procedure used for identification of ethnic affiliation between the censuses. In 1970 identification still is based on the respondent's father's place of birth, while in 1980 identification is based upon self-reported ancestry.

IV

Secular Changes in the Magnitude of Labor Market Discrimination

APPLICATION OF A VARIANT of the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition permits us to sort between the comparative importance of the human capital gap and the discriminatory gap in explaining intergroup differences in OCCSCORE. Our procedure is to estimate equations for OCCSCORE for each ethnic and racial group separately by gender in each census year where there was a sufficient number of observations to make regression estimation viable. In each census year OCCSCORE regressions also were estimated separately for all males and all females in the United States. The latter regressions in each year served as the reference equations for comparison of each ethnic/race gender group's performance and treatment in American labor markets.

For a given year, insertion of the average characteristics of an ethnic or racial group of males or females into the OCCSCORE equation for all males or females indicates the score the average member of that group would have received had he or she been treated like an average member of the US population. The gap between this hypothetical OCCSCORE and the actual OCCSGORE for all males and females reveals the deficiency in OCCSCORE-generating characteristics for the group. After dividing by OCCSCORE for the entire population of males or females we arrive at what we label an OWN score, the proportionate gain or loss in occupational status due to group advantage or disadvantage in human capital.

Alternatively, by substituting the average characteristics of all males or females into the OCCSCORE equation for a specific ethnic or racial group, OCCSCORE is calculated for the average male or female in the United States if he or she were treated like a member of the specific ethnic or racial group. Taking the difference between this hypothetical OCCSCORE and the actual OCCSCORE for all males or females provides a measure of the discriminatory gap. Again, dividing this figure by the OCCSCORE for all males and females yields a measure we label ROR, which captures the differential in rates of return for given characteristics received by members of the groups. This is our estimate of discrimination in occupational mobility.