NOTE: Button leads to non-technical summary of the study. The full study can be found at the authoring organization’s link below.
Author(s): The Equality of Opportunity Project
- Raj Jetty – Stanford University and the National Bureau of Economic Research
- Nathaniel Hendren – Harvard University and the National Bureau of Economic Research
- Maggie R. Jones – U.S. Census Bureau
- Sonya R. Porter – U.S. Census Bureau
Published: March 2018
Report Intro/Brief:
“In our most recent study, we analyze racial differences in economic opportunity using data on 20 million children and their parents. We show black children have much lower rates of upward mobility and higher rates of downward mobility than white children, leading to black-white income disparities that persist across generations. While Hispanic and black Americans presently have comparable incomes, the incomes of Hispanic Americans are increasing steadily across generations.
The black-white gap in upward mobility is driven entirely by differences in men’s, not women’s, outcomes. Black and white men have very different outcomes even if they grow up in two-parent families with comparable incomes, education, and wealth; live on the same city block; and attend the same school. Black-white gaps are smaller in low-poverty neighborhoods with lower levels of racial bias among whites and a larger fraction of black fathers at home. We conclude that reducing the black-white income gap will require efforts whose impacts cross neighborhood and class lines and increase upward mobility specifically for black men.”
