Interesting original paper and even more interesting analysis by you, Javiero! Thank you.
An observation: The Caribbean includes many countries that were not included in this data set. For instance, the entire Dutch Caribbean (St. Maarten, Curacao, Aruba, and the special municipality islands of Bonaire, St. Eustatius, and Saba, and which I have an interest in since I live here) is not included. It's also the case that most of the Latin American and Caribbean countries that were included in this analysis have significant income inequality. The more unequal a country is overall, the easier it is going to be to statistically show differences between groups, but also the more that generational consolidation of wealth is going to affect incomes now.
So, for instance, Brazil has a Gini coefficient of 0.52, while my island home of Saba has a Gini coefficient of 0.35--lower than any of the countries included in this analysis. So I wonder about this effect of general income inequality making the effects of income inequality between groups more dramatic. Would we expect to see reduced impacts of skin color on income in places that have greater income equality overall?
> The more unequal a country is overall, the easier it is going to be to statistically show differences between groups, but also the more that generational consolidation of wealth is going to affect incomes now.
That's a good point. I should have mentioned in the post that the survey question about personal income (Q10G) asks only about salary/pension, excluding other sources of income. This doesn't affect the original question about skin color discrimination, but it does make me wonder whether there's any inter-generational effect on personal income.
If the wealth (or income) of the previous generation has an effect on the personal income of the next generation, after controlling for all other variables, I'd be inclined to think that yes, there is consolidation of wealth.
> Would we expect to see reduced impacts of skin color on income in places that have greater income equality overall?
I think causation might go in the other direction: more discrimination creates greater inequality. Though, on second thought, maybe greater income equality does foster a sense of solidarity (specially in small countries) that makes it less likely for discrimination to persist.
Interesting. I would suspect that even though the data is literally only about salary/pension, in general higher generational wealth is going to be reflected in higher income on these measures as well. I think this is especially going to be the case in Latin America and the Caribbean, where there is a big difference in quality between free public school and expensive private school, thus leading to different job opportunities. Also--and I'm not trying to add to any negative stereotypes about the Caribbean, I'm just observing real phenomena here--many islands do have a real problem with corruption culture. A more charitable way of wording that is that in small communities, who-knows-who is a key way people get positions. So my daddy being wealthy and powerful is going to mean that I have more, better job offers coming my way than a better-qualified person whose parents are poor.
I'm not sure about the directionality of the relationship between more inequality overall and more discrimination, but I think these two are likely to run together, whatever direction the causal arrow points. If I had to guess, I would guess these are synergistic with each other.
> So my daddy being wealthy and powerful is going to mean that I have more, better job offers coming my way than a better-qualified person whose parents are poor.
Agreed. I don't believe this is confined to Latin America and the Caribbean tough (think of American legacy admissions, etc.). I did think some time ago of a way to (maybe) measure the effect of who-knows-who/good-connections on income, related precisely to the mixed public/private Latam schooling system that you mention.
> If I had to guess, I would guess these are synergistic with each other.
Interesting original paper and even more interesting analysis by you, Javiero! Thank you.
An observation: The Caribbean includes many countries that were not included in this data set. For instance, the entire Dutch Caribbean (St. Maarten, Curacao, Aruba, and the special municipality islands of Bonaire, St. Eustatius, and Saba, and which I have an interest in since I live here) is not included. It's also the case that most of the Latin American and Caribbean countries that were included in this analysis have significant income inequality. The more unequal a country is overall, the easier it is going to be to statistically show differences between groups, but also the more that generational consolidation of wealth is going to affect incomes now.
So, for instance, Brazil has a Gini coefficient of 0.52, while my island home of Saba has a Gini coefficient of 0.35--lower than any of the countries included in this analysis. So I wonder about this effect of general income inequality making the effects of income inequality between groups more dramatic. Would we expect to see reduced impacts of skin color on income in places that have greater income equality overall?
> The more unequal a country is overall, the easier it is going to be to statistically show differences between groups, but also the more that generational consolidation of wealth is going to affect incomes now.
That's a good point. I should have mentioned in the post that the survey question about personal income (Q10G) asks only about salary/pension, excluding other sources of income. This doesn't affect the original question about skin color discrimination, but it does make me wonder whether there's any inter-generational effect on personal income.
If the wealth (or income) of the previous generation has an effect on the personal income of the next generation, after controlling for all other variables, I'd be inclined to think that yes, there is consolidation of wealth.
> Would we expect to see reduced impacts of skin color on income in places that have greater income equality overall?
I think causation might go in the other direction: more discrimination creates greater inequality. Though, on second thought, maybe greater income equality does foster a sense of solidarity (specially in small countries) that makes it less likely for discrimination to persist.
Interesting. I would suspect that even though the data is literally only about salary/pension, in general higher generational wealth is going to be reflected in higher income on these measures as well. I think this is especially going to be the case in Latin America and the Caribbean, where there is a big difference in quality between free public school and expensive private school, thus leading to different job opportunities. Also--and I'm not trying to add to any negative stereotypes about the Caribbean, I'm just observing real phenomena here--many islands do have a real problem with corruption culture. A more charitable way of wording that is that in small communities, who-knows-who is a key way people get positions. So my daddy being wealthy and powerful is going to mean that I have more, better job offers coming my way than a better-qualified person whose parents are poor.
I'm not sure about the directionality of the relationship between more inequality overall and more discrimination, but I think these two are likely to run together, whatever direction the causal arrow points. If I had to guess, I would guess these are synergistic with each other.
> So my daddy being wealthy and powerful is going to mean that I have more, better job offers coming my way than a better-qualified person whose parents are poor.
Agreed. I don't believe this is confined to Latin America and the Caribbean tough (think of American legacy admissions, etc.). I did think some time ago of a way to (maybe) measure the effect of who-knows-who/good-connections on income, related precisely to the mixed public/private Latam schooling system that you mention.
> If I had to guess, I would guess these are synergistic with each other.
Probably so.