Labor Market Discrimination in the United States

Abstract

One important argument in favor of affirmative action programs is that, despite apparent changes in American attitudes about race and gender since World War II, race and sex discrimination persist. Labor market discrimination exists if equally productive workers receive systematically unequal treatment, by employers, on the basis of ascriptive characteristics such as race or gender. Economists commonly gauge discrimination by observing the gap in earnings between, say, Blacks and Whites or females and males, that cannot be accounted for by differences in observed characteristics such as education, experience, or seniority. Virtually every empirical study shows that nonwhites and females earn less than White males with similar observable characteristics and most scholars have concluded that discrimination is a feature of the American labor market.