In this paper we review research findings from the 1980s and early 1990s on race and gender pay gaps. In addition. we present some evidence from the Current Population Surveys (1972, 1982 and 1989) regarding the impact of shifts in the industrial composition of employment and in interindustry...

African-Americans entered the post-Civil War era with extremely low levels of exposure to schooling. Relying primarily on micro-level census data, we describe racial differences in literacy rates, school attendance, years of educational attainment, age-in-grade distributions, spending per pupil,...

We use data from the Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to study the slowdown in the convergence of female and male wages in the 1990s compared to the 1980s. We found that changes in human capital did not contribute to the trends, since women improved their relative human capital to...

We study the impact of selection bias on estimates of the gender pay gap, focusing on whether the gender pay gap has fallen since 1981. Previous research has found divergent results across techniques, identification strategies, data sets, and time periods. Using Michigan Panel Study of Income...

This paper examines gender differences in labor market outcomes for hard-to-employ youth in the US and West Germany during the 1984-91 period. We find that young, less educated American men and especially women are far less likely to be employed than their German counterparts. Moreover, less...

In this paper, we use 2008-2013 American Community Survey data to update and further probe Dahl and Moretti's (2008) son preference results, which found evidence that having a female first child increased the probability of single female headship and raised fertility. In light of the substantial...

The historical evolution of racial differences in income in the 20th century United States has been examined intensively by economists, but the evolution of racial differences in wealth has been examined far less. This paper uses IPUMS data to study trends in racial differences in home ownership...

We present estimates of home ownership for African-American and white households from 1870 to 2007. The estimates pertain to a sample of households headed by adult men participating in the labor force but the substantive findings are unchanged if the analysis is extended to all households. Over...

We develop a model of induced innovation where research effort is a function of the death rate, and thus the potential to reduce deaths in the population. We also consider potential social consequences that arise from this form of induced innovation based on differences in disease prevalence...