The American family in black & white: A post-racial strategy for improving skills to promote equality

Daedalus

Volumn 140, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 70-89

  Heckman, James J ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 79955459661     PISSN: 00115266     EISSN: 15486192     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/DAED_a_00078     Document Type: Article

References (115)

1. The research presented in this essay was supported by the American Bar Foundation (nichd R01 HD065072, nichd R01 HD054702), the Institute for New Economic Thinking, the J.B. & M.K. Pritzker Family Foundation, the Buffett Early Childhood Fund, the MacArthur Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and an anonymous foundation. The views expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily those of the funders. I thank Steve Durlauf, Miriam Gensowski, Lynne Pettler Heckman, Tim Kautz, Nick Mader, Seong Hyeok Moon, Rich Neimand, Bob Pollak, and Paul Tough for their very helpful comments on drafts of the paper. Molly Schnell gave devoted research assistance and helpful commentary. I thank Nick Mader and Seong Moon for their help in producing some of the supporting material for this paper, which is available as a Web appendix at http://jenni.uchicago.edu/understanding_b-w_gap.
2. See John J. Donohue and James J. Heckman, "Continuous Versus Episodic Change: The Impact of Civil Rights Policy on the Economic Status of Blacks," Journal of Economic Literature 29 (4) (1991).
3. See Richard Butler and James J. Heckman, "The Impact of the Government on the Labor Market Status of Black Americans: A Critical Review," in Equal Rights and Industrial Relations, ed. Leonard J. Hausman, Orley Ashenfelter, Bayard Rustin, Richard F. Schubert, and Donald Slaiman (Madison, Wis.: Industrial Relations Research Association, 1977).
4. Amitabh Chandra, Is the Convergence of the Racial Wage Gap Illusory? (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2003).
5. and James J. Heckman and Paul A. LaFontaine, "The American High School Graduation Rate: Trends and Levels," Review of Economics and Statistics 92 (2) (2010).
6. William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
7. William Julius Wilson, More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City (New York: W.W. Norton, 2009).
8. See Heckman and LaFontaine, "The American High School Graduation Rate."
9. See James J. Heckman, Robert J. LaLonde, and Jeffrey A. Smith, "The Economics and Econometrics of Active Labor Market Programs," in Handbook of Labor Economics, vol. 3A, ed. Orley Ashenfelter and David Card (New York: North-Holland, 1999).
10. See David Ellwood and Christopher Jencks, "The Uneven Spread of Single-Parent Families: What Do We Know? Where Do We Look for Answers?" in Social Inequality, ed. Kathryn M. Neckerman (New York: Russell Sage, 2004).
11. Sara McLanahan, "Diverging Destinies: How Children Are Faring Under the Second Demographic Transition," Demography 41 (4) (2004).
12. Daniel P. Moynihan, Employment, Income, and the Ordeal of the Negro Family (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965). See also, http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/webid-meynihan.htm.
13. See the essays in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 621 (1) (2009).
14. especially Douglas S. Massey and Robert J. Sampson, "Moynihan Redux: Legacies and Lessons".
15. and William Julius Wilson, "The Moynihan Report and Research on the Black Community."
16. See this essay's Web appendix at http://jenni.uchicago.edu/understanding_b-w_gap.
17. See the gaps documented in the Web appendix at http://jenni.uchicago.edu/understanding_b-w_gap.
18. and the recent review by Roland Fryer, "Racial Inequality in the 21st Century: The Declining Significance of Discrimination," in Handbook of Labor Economics, vol. 4 (Amsterdam and New York: North-Holland, forthcoming 2011).
19. I use a procedure developed by Derek A. Neal and William R. Johnson, "Basic Skills and the Black-White Earnings Gap," in The Black-White Test Score Gap, ed. Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1998).
20. See Cameron and Heckman, "The Dynamics of Educational Attainment for Black, Hispanic, and White Males." Because the results are similar for men and women, I report only the pooled results.
21. See Pedro Carneiro, James J. Heckman, and Dimitriy V. Masterov, "Understanding the Sources of Ethnic and Racial Wage Gaps and Their Implications for Policy," in Handbook of Employment Discrimination Research: Rights and Realities, ed. Robert L. Nelson and Laura Beth Nielsen (New York: Springer, 2005).
22. and Pedro Carneiro, James J. Heckman, and Dimitriy V. Masterov, "Labor Market Discrimination and Racial Differences in Pre-Market Factors," Journal of Law and Economics 48 (1) (2005).
23. Devah Pager, "The Use of Field Experiments for Studies of Employment Discrimination: Contributions, Critiques, and Directions for the Future," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 609 (2007).
24. See James J. Heckman, "Detecting Discrimination," Journal of Economic Perspectives 12 (2) (1998).
25. Roland Fryer, "Racial Inequality in the 21st Century." Fryer reports ability-adjusted disparities for many other outcomes. In virtually all cases he considers, measured gaps are diminished (but not fully eliminated) by accounting for ability.
26. See figures in the Web appendix, http://jenni.uchicago.edu/understanding_b-w_gap.
27. See Christopher Jencks, "Racial Bias in Testing," in The Black-White Test Score Gap, ed. Jencks and Phillips.
28. Paul R. Sackett, Matthew J. Borneman, and Brian S. Connelly, "High Stakes Testing in Higher Education and Employment: Appraising the Evidence for Validity and Fairness," American Psychologist 63 (4) (2008).
29. Carneiro, Heckman, and Masterov, "Understanding the Sources of Ethnic and Racial Wage Gaps".
30. Carneiro, Heckman, and Masterov, "Labor Market Discrimination and Racial Differences."
31. Carneiro, Heckman, and Masterov, "Understanding the Sources of Ethnic and Racial Wage Gaps".
32. Carneiro, Heckman, and Masterov, "Labor Market Discrimination and Racial Differences."
33. Claude M. Steele and Joshua Aronson, "Stereotype Threat and the Test Performance of Academically Successful African Americans," in The Black-White Test Score Gap, ed. Jencks and Phillips.
34. See Paul R. Sackett, Chaitra M. Hardison, and Michael J. Cullen, "On Interpreting Stereotype Threat as Accounting for African American-White Differences on Cognitive Tests," American Psychologist 59 (1) (2004).
35. Daniel M. Koretz, Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008).
36. Richard Rothstein, Rebecca Jacobsen, and Tamara Wilder, Grading Education: Getting Accountability Right (New York: Economic Policy Institute and Teachers College Press, 2008).
37. Mathilde Almlund, Angela L. Duckworth, James J. Heckman, and Tim Kautz, "Personality Psychology and Economics," Handbook of the Economics of Education, ed. Eric A. Hanushek, S. Machin, and L. Wößmann (Amsterdam: Elsevier, forthcoming 2011).
38. William Safire, "On Language; the Elision Fields," The New York Times, August 13, 1989.
39. See the evidence summarized in Almlund, Duckworth, Heckman, and Kautz, "Personality Psychology and Economics."
40. Almlund, Duckworth, Heckman, and Kautz, "Personality Psychology and Economics."
41. See the evidence cited in Pedro Carneiro and James J. Heckman, "Human Capital Policy," in Inequality in America: What Role for Human Capital Policies? ed. James J. Heckman, Alan B. Krueger, and Benjamin M. Friedman (Cambridge, Mass.: mit Press, 2003).
42. Flavio Cunha, James J. Heckman, Lance J. Lochner, and Dimitriy V. Masterov, "Interpreting the Evidence on Life Cycle Skill Formation," in Handbook of the Economics of Education, ed. Eric A. Hanushek and Frank Welch, vol. 1 (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 2006).
43. See Annette Lareau, Home Advantage: Social Class and Parental Intervention in Elementary Education, 2nd ed. (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000).
44. See the analyses in the Web appendix at http://jenni.uchicago.edu/understanding_b-w_gap.
45. It is not possible to reliably measure cognition before age three. See Michael Lewis and Harry McGurk, "Evaluation of Infant Intelligence," Science 178 (4066) (1972).
46. See the evidence summarized in Cunha, Heckman, Lochner, and Masterov, "Interpreting the Evidence on Life Cycle Skill Formation."
47. See the evidence summarized in Carneiro and Heckman, "Human Capital Policy".
48. Cunha, Heckman, Lochner, and Masterov, "Interpreting the Evidence on Life Cycle Skill Formation".
49. James J. Heckman, "Schools, Skills and Synapses," Economic Inquiry 46 (3) (2008).
50. Similar gaps arise when children are classified by various combinations of maternal ability, long-term family income, and material education. See the Web appendix, http://jenni.uchicago.edu/understanding_b-w_gap.
51. See, for example, James J. Heckman, "Lessons from the Bell Curve," Journal of Political Economy 103 (5) (1995).
52. Bernie Devlin, Steven E. Feinberg, Daniel P. Resnick, and Kathryn Roeder, eds., Intelligence, Genes, and Success: Scientists Respond to the Bell Curve (New York: Springer, Copernicus, 1997).
53. David C. Rowe, The Limits of Family Influence: Genes, Experience, and Behavior (New York: Guilford Press, 1994).
54. See Yona Rubinstein and Dror Brenner, "Pride and Prejudice: Evidence from the 'Promised Land,'" unpublished manuscript (Brown University, 2010). Note, however, that there is a small amount of genetic variation between the two groups.
55. See Christopher Winship and Sanders Korenman, "Does Staying in School Make You Smarter? The Effect of Education on iq in the Bell Curve," in Intelligence, Genes, and Success, ed. Devlin, Feinberg, Resnick, and Roeder.
56. Neal and Johnson, "Basic Skills and the Black-White Earnings Gap".
57. Karsten T. Hansen, James J. Heckman, and Kathleen J. Mullen, "The Effect of Schooling and Ability on Achievement Test Scores," Journal of Econometrics 121 (1-2) (2004).
58. See Lex Borghans, Bart H.H. Golsteyn, James J. Heckman, and John Eric Humphries, "iq, Achievement, and Personality" (Department of Economics, University of Chicago, 2010).
59. See also the evidence in Almlund, Duckworth, Heckman, and Kautz, "Personality Psychology and Economics."
60. Matt Ridley, Nature Via Nurture: Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human, 1st ed. (New York: Fourth Estate, 2003).
61. See the essays in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences: The Biology of Disadvantage 1186 (2010).
62. Avshalom Caspi, Joseph McClay, Terrie E. Moffitt, Jonathan Mill, Judy Martin, Ian W. Craig, Alan Taylor, and Richie Poulton, "Role of Genotype in the Cycle of Violence in Maltreated Children," Science 297 (5582) (2002).
63. See Mario F. Fraga, Esteban Ballestar, Maria F. Paz, Santiago Ropero, Fernando Setien, Maria L. Ballestar, Damia Heine-Suñer, Juan C. Cigudosa, Miguel Urioste, Javier Benitez, Manuel Boix-Chornet, Abel Sanchez-Aguilera, Charlotte Ling, Emma Carlsson, Pernille Poulsen, Allan Vaag, Zarko Stephan, Tim D. Spector, Yue-Zhong Wu, Christoph Plass, and Manel Esteller, "Epigenetic Differences Arise During the Lifetime of Monozygotic Twins," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 102 (30) (2005).
64. See Terrie E. Moffitt, "Gene-Environment Interaction in Problematic and Successful Aging," unpublished manuscript (Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, Duke University); presented at the Workshop on Genetic Methods and Life Course Development, National Institute on Aging, Bethesda, Maryland, February 11-12, 2008. For the figures posted on the display website for the Marshall Lecture, see http://jenni.uchicago.edu/Milan_2008/.
65. Eric Turkheimer, Andreana Haley, Mary Waldron, Brian D'Onofrio, and Irving I. Gottesman, "Socioeconomic Status Modifies Heritability of iq in Young Children," Psychological Science 14 (6) (2003).
66. Frances A. Champagne and James P. Curley, "How Social Experiences Influence the Brain," Current Opinion in Neurobiology 15 (2005).
67. Frances A. Champagne, Ian C.G. Weaver, Josie Diorio, Sergiy Dymov, Moshe Szyf, and Michael J. Meaney, "Maternal Care Associated with Methylation of the Estrogen Receptor-Alpha1b Promoter and Estrogen Receptor-Alpha Expression in the Medial Preoptic Area of Female Offspring," Endocrinology 147 (6) (2006). Ethologist Stephen Suomi reports parallel findings on genetic moderation of environmental influences for rhesus monkeys, which have 95 percent human genes.
68. See Stephen J. Suomi, "Developmental Trajectories, Early Experiences, and Community Consequences: Lessons from Studies with Rhesus Monkeys," in Developmental Health and the Wealth of Nations: Social, Biological, and Educational Dynamics, ed. Daniel P. Keating and Clyde Hertzman (New York: Guilford Press, 1999).
69. Stephen J. Suomi, "Gene-Environment Interactions and the Neurobiology of Social Conflict," Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1008 (2003).
70. Gunnar Kaati, Lars Olov Bygren, Marcus Pembrey, and Michael Sjostrom, "Transgenerational Response to Nutrition, Early Life Circumstances and Longevity," European Journal of Human Genetics 15 (7) (2007).
71. Eva Jablonka and Gal Raz, "Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance: Prevalence, Mechanisms, and Implications for the Study of Heredity and Evolution," The Quarterly Review of Biology 84 (2) (2009).
72. Christopher W. Kuzawa and Elizabeth Sweet, "Epigenetics and the Embodiment of Race: Developmental Origins of us Racial Disparities in Cardiovascular Health," American Journal of Human Biology 21 (1) (2009).
73. Peter D. Gluckman, Mark A. Hanson, and Alan S. Beedle, "Non-Genomic Transgenerational Inheritance of Disease Risk," BioEssays 29 (2) (2007).
74. See James S. Coleman, Equality of Educational Opportunity (Washington, D.C.: Office of Education, U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1966).
75. See Susan B. Neuman, Changing the Odds for Children at Risk: Seven Essential Principles of Educational Programs that Break the Cycle of Poverty (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2009).
76. See Diane Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (New York: Basic Books, 2010).
77. Philip Gleason, Melissa Clark, Christina Tuttle, and Emily Dwyer, The Evaluation of Charter School Impacts (National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, 2010).
78. Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System.
79. See, for example, McLanahan, "Diverging Destinies".
80. Sara McLanahan and Gary D. Sandefur, Growing Up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994).
81. See Donna K. Ginther and Robert A. Pollak, "Family Structure and Children's Educational Outcomes: Blended Families, Stylized Facts, and Descriptive Regressions," Demography 41 (4) (2004). Ginther and Pollack show that children living in blended families (without both biological parents present) do about the same as children of lone parents.
82. McLanahan, "Diverging Destinies."
83. Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley, "American Parenting of Language-Learning Children: Persisting Differences in Family-Child Interactions Observed in Natural Home Environments," Developmental Psychology 28 (6) (1992).
84. Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley, Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children (Baltimore, Md.: P.H. Brookes, 1995).
85. See Sara McLanahan, Fragile Families and the Reproduction of Poverty (Princeton, N.J.: Center for Research on Child Wellbeing and Fragile Families, 2008).
86. Suzanne M. Bianchi, John P. Robinson, and Melissa A. Milkie, Changing Rhythms of American Family Life, ed. Douglas L. Anderton, Dan Clawson, Naomi Gerstel, Joya Misra, Randall G. Stokes, and Robert Zussman (New York: Russell Sage, 2006).
87. See the evidence on school readiness cited in Neuman, Changing the Odds for Children at Risk.
88. See also Kristin L. Moilanen, Daniel S. Shaw, Thomas J. Dishion, Frances Gardner, and Melvin Wilson, "Predictors of Longitudinal Growth in Inhibitory Control in Early Childhood," Social Development 19 (2) (2009).
89. Ronald Ferguson, "Why America's Black-White School Acheivement Gap Persists," in Ethnicity, Social Mobility, and Public Policy, ed. Glenn C. Loury, Tariq Modood, and Steven M. Teles (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
90. Lareau, Home Advantage.
91. See Marco Francesconi, Adult Outcomes for Children of Teenage Mothers (Institute for the Study of Labor, 2007).
92. Judith A. Levine, Harold Pollack, and Maureen E. Comfort, "Academic and Behavioral Outcomes among the Children of Young Mothers," Journal of Marriage and Family 63 (2) (2001).
93. See J. Peter Nilsson, Does a Pint a Day Affect Your Child's Pay? The Effect of Prenatal Alcohol Exposure on Adult Outcomes (Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation, 2008).
94. Ann Streissguth, "Offspring Effects of Prenatal Alcohol Exposure from Birth to 25 Years: The Seattle Prospective Longitudinal Study," Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings 14 (2) (2007).
95. Xingqi Zhang, Joanna H. Sliwowska, and Joanne Weinberg, "Prenatal Alcohol Exposure and Fetal Programming: Effects on Neuroendocrine and Immune Function," Experimental Biology and Medicine 230 (6) (2005).
96. Paul Tough, Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America (New York: First Mariner Books, 2009).
97. Susan E. Mayer, What Money Can't Buy: Family Income and Children's Life Chances (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997).
98. When an American Indian tribe substantially enhanced its income by opening a casino, child behavioral outcomes improved dramatically but not uniformly. Most of the improvement arose in children whose parents improved their parenting. See E. Jane Costello, Scott N. Compton, Gordon Keeler, and Adrian Angold, "Relationships Between Poverty and Psychopathology: A Natural Experiment," Journal of the American Medical Association 290 (15) (2003).
99. Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, Special Sub-committee on Indian Education, A National Tragedy-A National Challenge, 91st Cong., 1st sess., 1969, S. Rep. 91-501.
100. Lawrence J. Schweinhart, Helen V. Barnes, and David Weikart, Significant Benefits: The High/Scope Perry Preschool Study through Age 27 (Ypsilanti, Mich.: High/Scope Press, 1993).
101. James J. Heckman, Seong Hyeok Moon, Rodrigo Pinto, Peter A. Savelyev, and Adam Q. Yavitz, "The Rate of Return to the High/Scope Perry Preschool Program," Journal of Public Economics 94 (1-2) (2010).
102. James J. Heckman, Lena Malofeeva, Rodrigo Pinto, and Peter A. Savelyev, "Understanding the Mechanisms Through Which an Influential Early Childhood Program Boosted Adult Outcomes" (Department of Economics, University of Chicago, 2010).
103. See the evidence in Heckman, LaLonde, and Smith, "The Economics and Econometrics of Active Labor Market Programs".
104. Cunha, Heckman, Lochner, and Masterov, "Interpreting the Evidence on Life Cycle Skill Formation."
105. Rothstein, Jacobsen, and Wilder, Grading Education.
106. See Flavio Cunha and James J. Heckman, "The Technology of Skill Formation," American Economic Review 97 (2) (2007).
107. Greg J. Duncan, Chantelle J. Dowsett, Amy Claessens, Katherine Mugnuson, Aletha C. Huston, Pamela Klebanov, Linda S. Pagani, Leon Feinstein, Mimi Engel, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Holly Sexton, Kathryn Duckworth, and Crista Japel, "School Readiness and Later Achievement," Developmental Psychology 43 (6) (2007).
108. Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Lisa B. Markman, "The Contribution of Parenting to Ethnic and Racial Gaps in School Readiness," The Future of Children 15 (1) (2005).
109. See the evidence in Heckman, LaLonde, and Smith, "The Economics and Econometrics of Active Labor Market Programs".
110. Cunha, Heckman, Lochner, and Masterov, "Interpreting the Evidence on Life Cycle Skill Formation."
111. See the evidence in Cunha, Heckman, Lochner, and Masterov, "Interpreting the Evidence on Life Cycle Skill Formation."
112. See Peter Z. Schochet, John Burghardt, and Sheena McConnell, "Does Job Corps Work? Impact Findings from the National Job Corps Study," American Economic Review 98 (5) (2008).
113. See the evidence in Cunha, Heckman, Lochner, and Masterov.
114. For discussion of a range of proven programs, see Arthur J. Reynolds, Arthur J. Rolnick, Michelle M. Englund, and Judy A. Temple, eds., Childhood Programs and Practices in the First Decade of Life: A Human Capital Integration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
115. http://www.educareschools.org/pages/index.php?q=node/6.