Income Inequality Paper

Income inequality is an ongoing issue in the world and race plays a major factor with this discrimination. The racial wage gap between black and white women has grown substantially since the 1980s (Pettit and Ewert 2009). Racial and ethnic wage gaps are significantly larger for men than for women. Based on the 1981 CPS date, black-white earnings are 0.67 for men vs. 0.97 for women, while Hispanic-white earnings are 0.72 for men and 0.90 for women (Bayard, Hellerstein, Neumark, and Troske 1999). I am going to explain two factors that contribute to income inequality, race and ethnicity, and gender. Racial discrimination is an ongoing inequality that is seen in multiple ways, one being racial/ethnic groups which effects their pay wages. The black-white

Even when the economy was decent and unemployment in the United States was only 4%, unemployment rates for black women were much higher nearing the 10% mark which was double that of white women (BLS, 2005). Research has suggested that

Black women are disadvantaged to white women in ways that might affect their work force outcomes: they have lower levels of education, they are more likely to be unmarried parents, and they are focused on nontechnical jobs (Pettit and Ewert 2009). Therefore, black women may be lacking social and economic characteristics compared to white women in the labor force. Growth in the wage gap by education can help explain the wage declines of black women. Black women are more likely to drop out of high school than white women, therefore less black women attend college or even complete college. Although black women’s education has increased since the 80s, employed white women were over 13% more likely to have attended college. As the education gaps increase, we can expect a growing wage gap between white and black women (McCall, 2001). The rising gap in marriage (and unmarried parenthood) between white and black women (Ellwood and Jencks 2004), combined with the marriage premium, may worsen the racial