Black-White Wage Gap Grows as Americans Remain in Denial [psmag.com]

Three new studies suggest racial economic inequality remains robust, despite the skewed views of many Americans.

A new study finds Americans wildly overestimate the progress we have made toward racial economic equality.

Ironically, this news comes days after other research revealed a growing wage gap between blacks and whites, as well as an entrenched hiring bias against African Americans.

"These findings suggest a profound misperception of, and unfounded optimism regarding, societal race-based economic equality," concludes a research team led by Michael Kraus of the Yale University School of Management.

This ignorance "is likely to have important consequences for public policy," the researchers write in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "We cannot solve problems that we do not know exist, or that we think are already solving themselves."

These conclusions are based on four studies featuring 1,377 Americans—blacks and whites from both the top of the income ladder (greater than $100,000 annually) and the bottom ($40,000 or less). They were asked to estimate the hourly wages or annual income of black and white Americans at a specific point in the past (1947, 1973, or 1979) and during the second decade of the 21st century.

[For more on this story by Tom Jacobs, go to https://psmag.com/economics/bl...ans-remain-in-denial]

Photo: Jotam Trejo/Flickr