Race & Ethnicity

The persistence of substantial racial and ethnic disparities in economic outcomes is an especially visible reminder that opportunities to get ahead remain starkly unequal. For scholars of race and ethnicity, the main research tasks are to document how racial disparities in education, marriage, and labor market outcomes are changing, how they are generated, and how they might be reduced.

Education

Are racial and ethnic differences in grades, high school graduation, college attendance, and college completion growing smaller or larger? What types of policy interventions might close racial and ethnic gaps in educational attainment?

Marriage and friendship

Why are interracial marriages becoming more common? Does this increase in interracial marriages serve to reduce racial and ethnic prejudices?

Labor market

"Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact." -Lyndon B. Johnson

What accounts for racial and ethnic differences in hiring, promotion, and pay? How important is discrimination in accounting for these differences? Are such differences growing larger or smaller?

Click on the buttons below for examples of recent policy analysis, basic research, and journalism addressing this key issue.
Policy: What Should Be Done? Research and Cutting-Edge Science Journalism and Popular Scholarship
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