February 14, 2008
Bryan Caplan on me on race
Bryan Caplan has an excellent post criticising the discussion of racial discrimination in "The Logic of Life". I’m going to read it a few more times but I think I’m sticking to my guns for the most part. But it is well worth reading:
Tim could object that I’ve overlooked a subtler way for statistical discrimination to harm a group. After all, he heavily emphasizes a few experiments showing that statistical discrimination could be a "self-fulfilling prophesy." For example, he describes a resume experiment where otherwise identical fake resumes with "black names" were less likely to get a response. "High-quality applicants were more likely to be invited for an interview, but only if they were white. Employers didn’t seem to notice whether black applicants had extra skills or experience." If that is how employers treat black applicants, what’s the point of trying? As Tim asks, "Why bother to get a degree or work experience if you are young, gifted, and black?"
But is it really true that the market fails to reward blacks for getting more education? Is it even true that the market rewards them less? I tested these claims using one of the world’s best labor data sets, the NLSY. The results directly contradict Tim’s self-fulfilling prophesy story. Blacks actually get a substantially larger return to education than non-blacks! The same goes for experience, though the result is not statistically significant. The real lesson of the data is that if you are young, gifted, and black, you should get a ton of education, because it has an exceptionally large pay-off.
Why would this be so? I’m not sure, but one simple story is that counter-stereotypical behavior stands out. When my sons were young, my wife was working a lot, so I often took my kids places on my own. Funny thing: Time and again, strangers came up and said, "Wow, you’re such a great dad!" But there were moms of young kids doing the same thing in plain sight, and the strangers rarely praised them. Why not? Because a dad taking care of two babies is counter-stereotypical, which grabs people’s attention.
Purely anecdotal, yes. But it is consistent with the small academic literature on counter-stereotypical behavior. If you clearly violate expectations, people not only notice; they often over-react.
The upshot is that stereotypes may actually be self-reversing rather than self-fulfilling. The marginal payoff of distinguishing yourself from the pack is high if people think poorly of the typical member of the pack.
I agree with the last paragraph, and discrimination against women seems to have this quality: educated women are paid something much closer to educated men, while uneducated women seem to be paid substantially less than uneducated men. Rational response: women should go to college. Actual response: women now outnumber men at college 4 to 3 in the US. (I think this discussion made the final edit and stayed in the book, but I’ll forgive Bryan because it was in chapter three anyway, not the chapter he’s currently discussing.)
I also suspect that one reason Bryan is complaining is that he expected a full chapter on statistical discrimination, a subject which he has studied quite closely, and read it in that light. My aims were broader (and therefore, yes, less focussed). What looks to an academic like "sugar coating" or digression looks to me (and I hope, most of my readers) like a wide-ranging treatment of a complex subject.
All that said, I’ll be re-reading Bryan’s post and thinking hard.
“Educated women are paid something much closer to educated men, while uneducated women seem to be paid substantially less than uneducated men”.
This is true, and interesting, but does not necessarily support the view that stereotypes are self-reversing. Men and women with, say, equivalent law degrees, are likely to make equally good lawyers, and their value is based on brains, not brawn. But uneducated women tend to be much less useful than uneducated men at unskilled or low-skilled physically demanding jobs such as removals services or nihgtclub bouncers. Jobs that require strength but not education pay better than jobs that require neither. That is one reason why uneducated men are paid more than uneducated women.
Posted by: M | February 14th, 2008 at 2:19 pm | Report this commentI don’t disagree with your larger point, but I think you chose a bad example with regard to education and wages for men & women. It might be true, but I think you’re overlooking something fundamental: physical strength.
When you factor out education, physical strength becomes a job qualification men have that women don’t. A mover or day laborer isn’t paid especially well, but they’re paid far better than a waitress or a maid.
Posted by: Independent George | February 14th, 2008 at 9:30 pm | Report this commentDamn. Ninja’d.
Posted by: Independent George | February 14th, 2008 at 9:31 pm | Report this commentTim,
As I’ve mentioned before, it’s in your overall best interests to stay away from writing about race.
A. There’s too much danger of getting your career Watsoned if you follow the facts out to their logical conclusions.
B. But when you try to come up with something politically correct enough to say publicly about such a potentially career-killing topic as race, you start to lose the respect of EconLog, Marginal Revolution, and the handful of other elite sites whose respect you are smart enough and honest enough to crave.
Writing about race is a no-win situation for you, so why don’t you just avoid the topic for a few years?
Posted by: Steve Sailer | February 15th, 2008 at 12:38 am | Report this commentI agree that this is a no-win situation for Tim. There are certain subjects that “must not be researched” and violators will be punished and blacklisted.
Posted by: Fred | February 15th, 2008 at 6:38 pm | Report this comment[…] Yesterday I reported on Bryan Caplan’s thoughtful criticisms of chapter six of The Logic of Life. One of the things that worried me most in that chapter is the possibility that employers don’t value qualifications or experience of minority groups, which in turn means that the victims rationally invest less in education and work experience, which in turn feeds statistical discrimination. Bryan is quite right to point out that there is nothing inevitable about this. It might well be that a victim of discrimination had a higher return to education, not a lower one. I argue that this is true for women and that is a likely explanation of the fact that women tend to be better educated than men. Bryan thinks the same story is true for African-Americans: I tested these claims using one of the world’s best labor data sets, the NLSY. The results directly contradict Tim’s self-fulfilling prophesy story. Blacks actually get a substantially larger return to education than non-blacks! The same goes for experience, though the result is not statistically significant. The real lesson of the data is that if you are young, gifted, and black, you should get a ton of education, because it has an exceptionally large pay-off. […]
Posted by: FT.com | The Undercover Economist | More on returns to education for victims of discrimination | February 21st, 2008 at 10:48 am | Report this comment