Double Jeopardy? The Interaction of Gender and Race on Earnings in the U.S.

There are sizeable earnings differentials by both gender and race in the U.S. labor market, with women earning less than men and most racial/ethnic minority groups earning less than whites. It has been proposed in the previous literature that the effects of gender and race on earnings are additive, so that minority women suffer the full disadvantage of each status. We test this proposition for a broad range of minority groups in the U.S. We find that women of all minority groups in the U.S. suffer a smaller gender penalty than white women. Exploring the potential role of racial variation in gender role specialization in producing such differentials, we find some empirical evidence suggesting that white families specialize more than families of most other races.