Race and the Income-Achievement Gap

We study racial disparities in economic opportunity during childhood. Using education data linked to tax records, we show there is variation in the income-achievement gap across race. The gap is small for East Asian children while it is noticeably larger for Indigenous children. Sorting into schools explains a large portion of the variation in the gap across students. In addition, our results suggest that the large income-achievement gap for Indigenous students is rooted in inequality in health outcomes and housing conditions. Our findings on incomeachievement gaps across race could partially explain the different intergenerational mobility outcomes by race previously documented