We analyze the interaction of race with physical and socioeconomic characteristics in the U.S. marriage market, using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics from 1999 to 2009 for black, white, and inter-racial couples. We consider the anthropometric characteristics of both spouses, together with...

In this paper we explore a serious eating disorder, bulimia nervosa (BN), which afflicts a surprising number of girls in the US. We challenge the long-held belief that BN primarily affects high income White teenagers, using a unique data set on adolescent females evaluated regarding their...

Using data from the Current Populations Survey 2015-2024 matched to skin color data in the New Immigrant Survey, this article shows that immigrants from countries with darker skin color face a substantial earnings penalty. The penalty is similar to that found using 2003 data on individual...

Many small businesses closed in the pandemic, but were economic losses disproportionately felt by businesses owned by people of color? This paper provides the first study of the impacts of COVID-19 on racial inequality in business earnings. Pandemic-induced losses to business earnings in 2020...

The average white male born in 1900 earned 2.6 times more labor income over their lifetime than the average Black male. This gap is nearly twice as large as the more commonly studied cross-sectional Black-white earnings gap because 48% of Black males born in 1900 died before the age of 30 as...

Using matched data from the 1996 to 2004 Current Population Survey (CPS), we examine racial patterns in annual transitions into and out of health insurance coverage. We first decompose racial differences in static health insurance coverage rates into group differences in transition rates into...

It has been well documented in the literature that ethnicity matters significantly in the determination of self-employment rates. In particular, African-American self-employment rates lag far behind rates for other racial groups. Similarly, the literature also provides evidence of the long lived...

Some workers bargain with prospective employers before accepting a job. Others could bargain, but find it undesirable, because their right to bargain has induced a sufficiently favorable offer, which they accept. Yet others perceive that they cannot bargain over pay; they regard the posted wage...

We show how small initial wealth differences between low skilled black and white workers can generate large differences in their labor-market outcomes. This even occurs in the absence of a taste for discrimination against blacks or exogenous differences in the distance to jobs. Because of the...

This paper examines differences in two important components of non-wage compensation, employer provided health insurance and pensions, across African Americans and the whites in the United States. Using data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth...