One-third of children in the United States are born to unmarried parents. A substantial number of black and Hispanic children live with a never-married mother. Children of never-married mothers are more likely to drop out of high school, repeat grades, and have behavioral problems than are...

We present evidence on changes in workplace segregation by education, race, ethnicity, and sex, from 1990 to 2000. The evidence indicates that racial and ethnic segregation at the workplace level remained quite pervasive in 2000. At the same time, there was fairly substantial segregation by...

We examine the possible sources of the larger racial and ethnic wage gaps for men than for women in the U.S. Specifically, using a newly created employer-employee matched data set containing workers in essentially all occupations, industries, and regions, we examine whether these wage...

We study workplace segregation in the United States using a unique matched employer-employee data set that we have created. We present measures of workplace segregation by education and language, and by race and ethnicity, and ­ since skill is often correlated with race and ethnicity ­ we...

We use data from a survey of employers to investigate how Affirmative Action in recruiting and hiring influences hiring practices, personnel policies, and ultimately employment outcomes. Our results show that Affirmative Action increases the number of recruitment and screening practices used by...

Economic research provides extensive evidence regarding discrimination against women and minorities, and some evidence on the redistributive effects of affirmative action. However, it provides much less evidence on affirmative action's impact on efficiency or performance, perhaps the key...

One potential method to increase the success of female graduate students in economics may be to encourage mentoring relationships between these students and female faculty members. Increased hiring of female faculty is viewed as one way to promote such mentoring relationships, perhaps because of...

We study the effects of state sex and race discrimination laws that were passed prior to federal antidiscrimination legislation. State sex discrimination laws targeted discrimination in pay only. Because an equal pay constraint raises the relative price of female labor, we would expect the...

Although the debate over Affirmative Action is both high-profile and high-intensity, neither side's position is based on a well-established set of research findings. Economics provides an extensive, well-known literature on which to draw regarding the existence and extent of labor market...

This paper reports on a small-scale audit study that investigates sex discrimination in restaurant hiring. Comparably matched pairs of men and women applied for jobs as waiters and waitresses at 65 restaurants in Philadelphia. The 130 applications led to 54 interviews and 39 job offers. The...