Race and ethnicity play a central role in understainding the structure of inequality in the United States. In this paper, we focus on the economic chasm between black and white America and what economic theory can contribute to our understanding of both inequality and the design of effective policy.

Despite a large literature on fertility and education there has been little research on how these joint decisions are affected by risks and shocks. This paper uses data on hurricanes in Guatemala combined with a household survey to analyse how households' decisions on fertility and investments...