Estimating the Potential Impact of Combined Race and Ethnicity Reporting on Long-Term Earnings Statistics
Year: 2024
Type: report
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: We use place of birth information from the Social Security Administration linked to earnings data from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics Program and detailed race and ethnicity data from the 2010 Census to study how long-term earnings differentials vary by place of birth for different self-identified race and ethnicity categories.We focus on foreign-born persons from countries that are heavily Hispanic and from countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).We find substantial heterogeneity of long-term earnings differentials within country of birth, some of which will be difficult to detect when the reporting format changes from the current two-question version to the new single-question version because they depend on selfidentifications that place the individual in two distinct categories within the single-question format, specifically, Hispanic and White or Black, and MENA and White or Black.We also study the USA-born children of these same immigrants.Long-term earnings differences for the 2nd generation also vary as a function of self-identified ethnicity and race in ways that changing to the single-question format could affect.
DOI: 10.3386/w32758
Authors: Kevin McKinney, John Abowd
Institution: National Bureau of Economic Research
Language: English
Topic: Migration and Labor Dynamics
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Awards: EITM: Developing the Tools to Understand Human Performance: An Empirical Infrastructure to Foster Research Collaboration, ITR-(ECS+ASE)-(dmc+int): Info Tech Challenges for Secure Access to Confidential Social Science Data, Dynamic Employer-Household Data and the Social Data Infrastructure, Demand for Older Workers
OpenAlex ID: W4401066701