UNIT 12: RACE AND GENDER DIFFERENCES IN EARNINGS: HOW BIG, AND HOW MUCH DUE TO EDUCATION AND OCCUPATION DIFFERENCES?

In the last unit we asked how great an effect differences in education level have on level of earnings. We had seen in the unit before that, unit 10, that more education means more earnings, and a better occupation means more earnings. And since more education goes with getting a better job, we could and did ask: How much of the effect of education on earnings is due to education apart from occupation, and now much of the education effect is due to the better jobs it helps people get?

This time we are going to ask: Do whites earn more than blacks? How much? How much of the earnings difference is due to white-black differences in education? In the kinds of jobs they have? Both put together? Then we will ask these same questions about men and women. So the work falls into two parts. We will be working with datafile WORK9Y.DAT, data from the 1990 Census.

A. Non-Hispanic White versus Black differences. Follow these instructions literally.

B: Women versus Men differences. Same instruction, just substitute GENDER for RACELAT, and Male for NHwhite, and Female for Black.

Open datafile WORK9Y.DAT. Crosstab RACELAT / EARNING. You will see that in this datafile, RACELAT has three categories:

NHwhite : Non-Hispanic white.

Black: Blacks, people who identify themselves as that on the census form.

AllOther: Includes Hispanics, Asians, and about 1 percent of the population who are something else, chiefly Native American.

That last category will appear in our tables, but we won't use it.

Crosstab RACELAT / EARNING. Make Fig. 12.1a: Percent making $25 or more by race-ethnicity. Full-time workers, aged 25-54. Source: 1990 Census. <WORK9Y.DAT. This is going to be a new kind of graph, that James A. Davis, the father of CHIP, calls a "tele-graph." It looks a bit like a telephone pole. Under the middle of your title, which can be written in a narrow space on the left side of the page, draw the vertical scale, 80 down to zero. To the right of it, draw another vertical line, the tele-graph pole. Make a short bar across the vertical line at the percentage for NHwhite, and another at the percentage for Black. Write the percentage numbers on each cross bar, and label each one.

Here on the following page is an example, with made-up numbers, where the NHwhite percent is 60 and the Black percent is 30. Imitate this, but put in the right numbers.

Also with made-up numbers, is Fig. 12.2a, with title as shown. You get the right numbers to put into it with EDUC / LEARNING, control RACELAT, and pct across. Make the vertical lines on the Fishnet graph. You see how these are like four tele-graphs, side by side.

Fig. 12.1a Percent making