Race and gender income inequality in the USA: black women vs. white men

TL;DR

This paper models the evolution of income disparities between black and white populations in the U.S., focusing on gender differences, and highlights black females and white males as income inequality poles.

Contribution

It extends a dynamic microeconomic model to analyze race and gender income disparities, providing insights into the extreme cases of income distribution.

Findings

Black females and white males are the income inequality poles.

The model accurately describes income evolution since 1930.

Results can be extrapolated to other races and ethnicities.

Abstract

Income inequality between different races in the U.S. is especially large. This difference is even larger when gender is involved. In a complementary study, we have developed a dynamic microeconomic model accurately describing the evolution of male and female incomes since 1930. Here, we extend our analysis and model the disparity between black and white population in the U.S., separately for males and females. Unfortunately, income microdata provided by the U.S. Census Bureau for other races and ethnic groups are not time compatible or too short for modelling purposes. We are forced to constrain our analysis to black and white population, but all principal results can be extrapolated to other races and ethnicities. Our analysis shows that black females and white males are two poles of the overall income inequality. The prediction of income distribution for two extreme cases with one model is the main challenge of this study.