Seeing opportunities
The Role of Colorism in Explaining African American Females’ Suspension Risk
Jamilia Blake et al.
School Psychology Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
African American female students’ elevated suspension risk has received national attention. Despite a number of studies documenting racial/ethnic disparities in African American females’ school suspension risk, few investigations have attempted to explain why these disparities occur. The purpose of this study was to examine the role of colorism in explaining suspension risk using a nationally representative sample of adolescent females. Controlling for individual- and school-level characteristics associated with school discipline such as student-teacher relationships, prior discipline history, school size and type, the results indicate that colorism was a significant predictor of school suspension risk. African American female adolescents with darker complexions were almost twice as likely to receive an out-of-school suspension as their White female peers. This finding was not found for African American female students with lighter skin complexions. Implications for adopting a colorist framework for understanding school discipline outcomes and future research for advancing the field in this area are discussed.
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Media Role Models and Black Educational Attainment: Evidence from the Cosby Show
Kirsten Cornelson
University of Toronto Working Paper, May 2015
Abstract:
The tendency of young people to imitate older members of their social groups could explain the surprising persistence of black-white education gaps in the U.S. over the past five decades. It is difficult to separate these "role modeling" effects, however, from other factors influencing educational attainment. This paper assesses the influence of role models on young people's educational choices by examining the impact of a popular 1980's sitcom: The Cosby Show. The show portrayed an upper middle class black family headed by highly educated parents, who frequently discussed the importance of education with their five children. If role model effects exist, black teenagers should have had a stronger response to this message. To test this hypothesis, I relate educational attainment to city-level Cosby Show ratings during the period in which a respondent was aged 16-20. In order to control for the possible endogeneity of Cosby Show popularity, I use Thursday night NBA games as an instrument for ratings. I show that exposure to The Cosby Show significantly increased college attainment among black men, with smaller effects for black women. I estimate that at least 110,000 young black men and women completed college as a result of the show. There is no similar effect among the white sample. The results do not appear to be driven by reduced discrimination, as Cosby Show ratings are not related to changes in either the black-white wage differential or in the return to college for blacks.
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Why Are Some STEM Fields More Gender Balanced Than Others?
Sapna Cheryan et al.
Psychological Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Women obtain more than half of U.S. undergraduate degrees in biology, chemistry, and mathematics, yet they earn less than 20% of computer science, engineering, and physics undergraduate degrees (National Science Foundation, 2014a). Gender differences in interest in computer science, engineering, and physics appear even before college. Why are women represented in some science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields more than others? We conduct a critical review of the most commonly cited factors explaining gender disparities in STEM participation and investigate whether these factors explain differential gender participation across STEM fields. Math performance and discrimination influence who enters STEM, but there is little evidence to date that these factors explain why women’s underrepresentation is relatively worse in some STEM fields. We introduce a model with three overarching factors to explain the larger gender gaps in participation in computer science, engineering, and physics than in biology, chemistry, and mathematics: (a) masculine cultures that signal a lower sense of belonging to women than men, (b) a lack of sufficient early experience with computer science, engineering, and physics, and (c) gender gaps in self-efficacy. Efforts to increase women’s participation in computer science, engineering, and physics may benefit from changing masculine cultures and providing students with early experiences that signal equally to both girls and boys that they belong and can succeed in these fields.
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Light Bulbs or Seeds? How Metaphors for Ideas Influence Judgments About Genius
Kristen Elmore & Myra Luna-Lucero
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Ideas are commonly described using metaphors; a bright idea appears like a “light bulb” or the “seed” of an idea takes root. However, little is known about how these metaphors may shape beliefs about ideas or the role of effort versus genius in their creation, an important omission given the known motivational consequences of such beliefs. We explore whether the light bulb metaphor, although widespread and intuitively appealing, may foster the belief that innovative ideas are exceptional occurrences that appear suddenly and effortlessly — inferences that may be particularly compatible with gendered stereotypes of genius as male. Across three experiments, we find evidence that these metaphors influence judgments of idea quality and perceptions of an inventor’s genius. Moreover, these effects varied by the inventor’s gender and reflected prevailing gender stereotypes: Whereas the seed (vs. light bulb) metaphor increased the perceived genius of female inventors, the opposite pattern emerged for male inventors.
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Are Firms That Discriminate More Likely to Go Out of Business?
Devah Pager
Sociological Science, September 2016
Abstract:
Economic theory has long maintained that employers pay a price for engaging in racial discrimination. According to Gary Becker’s seminal work on this topic and the rich literature that followed, racial preferences unrelated to productivity are costly and, in a competitive market, should drive discriminatory employers out of business. Though a dominant theoretical proposition in the field of economics, this argument has never before been subjected to direct empirical scrutiny. This research pairs an experimental audit study of racial discrimination in employment with an employer database capturing information on establishment survival, examining the relationship between observed discrimination and firm longevity. Results suggest that employers who engage in hiring discrimination are less likely to remain in business six years later.
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Title IX and the Education of Teen Mothers
Melanie Guldi
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Title IX of the 1972 Educational Amendments to the Civil Rights Act (Title IX) made it illegal for an institution receiving Federal funding to exclude pregnant/parenting teens from the classroom. During the 1970s, education outcomes improved for all women but especially for teen mothers. I examine whether Title IX can explain any part of the advances for teen mothers. Opportunity costs of staying in school decrease for a larger fraction of teens in areas where teen motherhood rates are higher prior to Title IX. I use this variation to test whether teens in areas with higher pre-Title IX teen motherhood rates exhibit larger educational gains than teens in other areas. Next I examine whether these gains are higher for teen mothers versus individuals who are not teen mothers. My results suggest that Title IX improved teen mothers’ education outcomes and that these effects are most pronounced for black teen mothers.
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Sean Nicholson-Crotty et al.
Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, October 2016, Pages 745-757
Abstract:
Scholars have suggested that the benefits of representative bureaucracy arise from bureaucrats acting in the interests of clients who share their characteristics, increased diversity encouraging even nonminority bureaucrats work to further the interests of minority clients, and/or the actions of clients that are more responsive to bureaucrats that share their characteristics. Despite decades of research, the literature has been unable to empirically disentangle these mechanisms, primarily because the vast majority of studies examine only organization-level data, and, at the aggregate level, they all produce identical findings. In contrast, this study makes use of data that allows us to observe the behavior of individual clients and bureaucrats, as well as the aggregate characteristics of the organizations in which they interact. Specifically, we make use of student-level data to predict differences in the probability that an elementary student is referred to gifted services by race. Our results suggest that black students are more likely to be referred to gifted services when taught by a black teacher but that increased presence of black teachers in the school other than the classroom teacher has little effect. We find some evidence that the classroom teacher effect is partially driven by teachers’ more positive views of own-race students. Our results do not suggest, however, that the positive impact of teacher-student race congruence on gifted assignment can be explained by differences in student test score performance or increased parental interaction with the teacher.
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Nicholas Papageorge, Seth Gershenson & Kyungmin Kang
Johns Hopkins University Working Paper, August 2016
Abstract:
We develop and estimate a joint model of the education and teacher-expectation production functions that identifies both the distribution of biases in teacher expectations and the impact of those biases on student outcomes via self-fulfilling prophecies. The identification strategy leverages insights from the measurement-error literature and a unique feature of a nationally representative dataset: two teachers provided their educational expectations for each student. We provide novel, arguably causal evidence that teacher expectations affect students' educational attainment. Estimates suggest that the elasticity of the likelihood of college completion with respect to teachers' expectations is about 0.12. On average, teachers are overly optimistic about students' ability to complete a four-year college degree. However, the degree of over-optimism of white teachers is significantly larger for white students than for black students. This highlights a nuance that is frequently overlooked in discussions of biased beliefs: unbiased (i.e., accurate) beliefs can be counterproductive if there are positive returns to optimism or if there are socio-demographic gaps in the degree of teachers' over-optimism, both of which we find evidence of. We use the estimated model to assess the effects of two policies on black students' college completion: hiring more black teachers and "de-biasing" white teachers so that they are similarly optimistic about black and white students.
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Implicit Racial Bias in Medical School Admissions
Quinn Capers et al.
Academic Medicine, forthcoming
Approach: To measure implicit racial bias, all 140 members of the Ohio State University College of Medicine (OSUCOM) admissions committee took the black-white implicit association test (IAT) prior to the 2012-2013 cycle. Results were collated by gender and student versus faculty status. To record their impressions of the impact of the IAT on the admissions process, members took a survey at the end of the cycle, which 100 (71%) completed.
Outcomes: All groups (men, women, students, faculty) displayed significant levels of implicit white preference; men (d = 0.697) and faculty (d = 0.820) had the largest bias measures (P < .001). Most survey respondents (67%) thought the IAT might be helpful in reducing bias, 48% were conscious of their individual results when interviewing candidates in the next cycle, and 21% reported knowledge of their IAT results impacted their admissions decisions in the subsequent cycle. The class that matriculated following the IAT exercise was the most diverse in OSUCOM's history at that time.
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Richard Patterson
Education Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
It is widely believed that the time children spend with parents significantly impacts human capital formation. If time varies significantly between black and white children, this may help explain the large racial gap in test scores and wages. In this study, I use data from the American Time Use Survey to examine the patterns in the time black and white children receive from mothers at each age between birth and age 14 years. I relate patterns in parenting time to trends in human capital formation observed in the literature. I observe that black children spend significantly less time with their mothers than white children in the first years of life. However, differences in parenting time rapidly decline with age and there are never significant differences in teaching time after socioeconomic variables are controlled. My findings suggest that the black–white human capital gap is unlikely to be driven by differences in teaching time or differences in parenting time after children enter school.
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Ethnic Enclave and Entrepreneurial Financing: Asian Venture Capitalists in Silicon Valley
Jing Zhang, Poh Kam Wong & Yuen Ping Ho
Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, September 2016, Pages 318–335
Abstract:
We examine the dilemma of ethnic investors in using ethnic network ties to invest by extending the ‘ethnic enclave’ concept to incorporate two dimensions: social network and social status. Our analysis of the first round of venture capital funding in Silicon Valley from 1976 to 2004 shows a higher likelihood of Asian venture capitalists (VCs) investing in Asian-led ventures than mainstream VCs. In addition, the valuation of their investments in mainstream ventures is higher than those by mainstream VCs in such ventures. In contrast, this premium effect is not observed when mainstream VCs invest in Asian ventures. These asymmetrical findings suggest the premium Asian VCs pay to compete in the mainstream venture market is due to their lower social status rather than their social network disadvantages.
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More on the Impact of Economic Freedom on the Black–White Income Gap
Gary Hoover, Ryan Compton & Daniel Giedeman
Public Finance Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using household-level data from 1980 to 2010, we examine whether economic freedom, as measured by the Economic Freedom of North America Index, has similar effects on white household income as it does on black household income. Our findings suggest that the positive effect of economic freedom found in most studies affects black households less than white households. Further, using the Oaxaca decomposition, our results show that economic freedom is an important factor explaining the gap between black and white household incomes.
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Yunhyung Chung, Stanley Gully & Kathi Lovelace
Journal of Personnel Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using data collected from 160 employed professionals in the US, we performed multivariate and univariate multiple regression analyses to examine the joint effect of perceived ethnic discrimination and ethnic dyadic dissimilarity on trainee readiness for diversity training (pre-training motivation to learn, self-efficacy, intention to use, and perceived utility). A significant interaction effect showed that individuals displayed stronger pre-training motivation to learn, intention to use, and perceived utility when they perceived discrimination based on ethnic background and when they were ethnically dissimilar to their supervisor. However, perceived ethnic discrimination was not associated with these three readiness variables when subordinate-supervisor ethnic backgrounds were the same. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.