The Structure of Disadvantage: Individual and Occupational Determinants of the Black-White Wage Gap

By Eric Grodsky, D. Pager. American Sociological Review, 2001

339 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This study is motivated by the idea that the racial gap in earnings is generated not only by individual differences but also by systematic variation in the occupational structure that attenuates or exacerbates the effects of race. Using data from the 1990 census and the Dictionary of Occupational Titles, a hierarchical linear modeling approach is employed that allows the simultaneous exploration of the mechanisms of income inequality operating both within and between occupations. Among private-sector employees, striking evidence shows that racial disparities increase in both absolute and percentage terms as one moves up the occupational earnings hierarchy. The association between average occupational earnings and within-occupation racial disadvantage reveals an overlooked source of racial earnings inequality which constrains the opportunities available to upwardly mobile black men in the private sector. This association cannot be explained by measured individual characteristics, or by the status, demographic composition, or skill demands of occupations. In the public sector, on the other hand, racial inequality in earnings is not systematically associated with average occupational earnings, and is instead more closely tied to individual human capital and occupational placement. The implications of these results are considered and directions for future research are suggested.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, General Health Professions, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7da3eb02841e28d6c8835f46bcd86bf7dd4c6b4c

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Citations in the corpus

Racial Wage Inequality: Job Segregation and Devaluation across U.S. Labor Markets1 (2004, background): “…the racial segregation of work and the underrewarding of black-dominated jobs focus on only one level of analysis—such as labor markets (e.g., Burr et al. 1991), occupations (e.g., Grodsky and Pager 2001) or establishment-specific jobs (e.g., TomaskovicDevey 1993b)—to the exclusion of other levels.”
Post-Baccalaureate Wage Growth within Four Years of Graduation: The Effects of College Quality and College Major (2005, background): “Although relative parity exists between blacks and whites within academic majors (enabling greater occupational mobility for blacks) recent work suggests an increase within occupation wage disparities between blacks and whites in the private sector (Grodsky and Pager, 2001).”
Compounded Disadvantage: Race, Incarceration, and Wage Growth (2011, background): “Affirmative action programs increased the representation of blacks in government-sector and professional jobs (e.g., Grodsky and Pager 2001) decreasing wage inequality, enabling blacks to accumulate assets and protect themselves against poverty in later adulthood.”
A question of belonging: race, social fit, and achievement. (2007, background): “... Black Americans, Latino Americans, and Native Americans look at schools and workplaces in the United States, they see places in which members of their group are numerically under-represented (especially in positions of authority; Census Bureau, 2003), encounter overt and subtle forms of prejudic”
The Deadly Challenges of Raising African American Boys (2016, background): “…Ferguson 2000; holland 2012; Morris 2005; Pascoe 2007; Pringle, Lyons, and Booker 2010; Strayhorn 2010), law enforcement (Brunson and Miller 2006; hagan, Shedd, and Payne 2005; Rios 2009), and employment (Bertrand and Mullainathan 2004; Grodsky and Pager 2001; Pager 2003; Wingfield 2009, 2011).”
The Sociology of Discrimination: Racial Discrimination in Employment, Housing, Credit, and Consumer Markets. (2008, background): “Networks and network composition may matter not only for the purposes of obtaining information and referrals for jobs, but also within jobs for the purposes of informal mentoring, contacts, and relevant information important to advancement (Ibarra 1993, Grodsky & Pager 2001).”
Racial and Ethnic Trends in the Suburbanization of Poverty in U.S. Metropolitan Areas, 1980–2010 (2014, background): “Hence, the standard errors should be interpreted cautiously, and more as “estimates of parameter dispersion contaminated by measurement error” (Grodsky & Pager, 2001, p. 552) rather than sampling variability per se.”
Cultural Mistrust, Academic Outcome Expectations, and Outcome Values among African American Adolescent Men (2005, background): “After the civil rights movement and continuing until the present, many African Americans have opportunities to work within the dominant culture, but they still face limited opportunities for promotion, commonly known as “the glass ceiling” (Grodsky & Pager, 2001).”
Black‐White Wage Inequality, Employment Rates, and Incarceration1 (2005, background): “Analysis of wages often emphasizes the economic gains of African-Americans and the progressive effects of public-sector employment and measures for equal employment opportunity (Burstein 1979; Burstein and Edwards 1994; Grodsky and Pager 2001; cf. McCall 2001).”