Race and Gender in the 21st Century: Divergence or Convergence?

• In Event: 3520 - Section on Race, Gender, and Class Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 8. Theorizing Intersectionality

Abstract

The significance of race and gender for socioeconomic attainment are classic issues in sociological discourse. Adding to that discussion, this paper seeks to conduct a trend analysis of race and gender socioeconomic status (SES) inequalities as they have (or have not) changed over recent years given political (and economic) changes in U.S. society. It does so using data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2001, 2005, 2009, 2013 and 2016 American Community Surveys (ACS), as represented in the Integrated Public Use Microdata Samples (IPUMS). Results suggest both variables (race and gender) to remain consistently salient, but in intricate and divergent ways. For race, a battery of statistical tests reveals that, in many respects, the relative standing of Blacks did not change much between 2001 and 2016. Unemployment rates for Blacks, for example, remained about twice that for Whites. Similarly, Black-White differences in college graduation rates remained relatively unchanged. Parallel comparisons between men and women, however, reveal more nuanced relationships. In several domains, women have caught up with men. Average education for women, for example, continued to be at par with men and, in recent years, have surpassed that for men. Multivariate time series regression analyses on annual earnings reveal three key findings. First, results show the race effect on annual earnings to have mostly increased over the time series, while the gender effect declined. Second, the size of the gender effect on annual earnings was consistently greater than the size of the race effect. Third, interaction models show that White men earned the most, followed by Black men, White women, and Black women, respectively, and that this was also consistent over the time series. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Authors

• Mamadi Corra, East Carolina University

• Jerry Johnson, East Carolina University