William Darity

Duke University | DU

Disparities across social identity groups (such as race, caste, and ethnicity) are a global phenomenon, where significant differences in wealth and other socioeconomic outcomes are observed. Although the contexts and historical roots of these differences vary by country, there are common factors—particularly arising at the intersection of social id...

“Earlier today the U.S. Census Bureau published a Federal Register Notice (FRN) seeking feedback from the public on the timeline to implement the Office of Management and Budget's updated Statistical Policy Directive No. 15 for Federal race and ethnicity data on the American Community Survey (ACS). The information gathered through this FRN will be...

This study begins with an overview of illustrative scenarios that historically have resulted in imbalances of economic well‐being, growth and stability which demarcate the Global South and the Global North. The authors examine alternative approaches to reparations for those structural imbalances, from monetary transfers that are more likely to have...

A rich empirical literature documents the consequences of mass incarceration for the wealth, health, and safety of Black Americans. Yet it often frames such consequences as a regrettable artifact of racially disproportionate criminal legal system contact, rather than situating the impetus and functioning of the criminal legal system in the wider co...

The racial wealth gap in the United States is the object of much misrepresentation and misunderstanding. Our paper is intended to provide a corrective. We will address how the mainstream economic view of the drivers of racial disparities in wealth is a human capital view that promotes anti-Black and personal responsibility narratives while ignoring...

The Oxford Handbook of W. E. B. Du Bois is a work detailing the life and works of the twentieth century scholar and activist, W. E. B. Du Bois. It contains fifty chapters covering the multidimensional life and works of Du Bois. The contributing authors are experts on the topics about Du Bois which they authored. Because Du Bois was a prodigious twe...

This paper describes Latinx stratification economics (LSE) as a scholarly approach to studying the economic status of Latinas/os/es/xs primarily in the United States. We coin the term LSE to refer to work that draws on and is in conversation with both the emergent, interdisciplinary subfield of stratification economics (SE) and the interdisciplinar...

We are acknowledging the significance and particularity of U.S. slavery. Our proposal is sensitive to those Black Americans concerned about the unique treatment and status of those whose ancestors were enslaved in the United States of America. We also are aware of resistance to being explicitly called a descendant of "slaves" (Brown & Molina, 2023)...

This paper examines the financial health of racial-ethnic groups in Tulsa, Oklahoma, nearly a century after the 1921 Tulsa Massacre. We use data from the Tulsa National Asset Scorecard for Communities of Color (NASCC) survey to assess the financial health of two demographic groups that were historically the victims of racial violence - Native Ameri...

The origin of inequality between social identity groups is anchored in acts of violent dispossession of freedom and property by the group seeking the advantages of dominance. The beginning of contemporary disparities in income and especially wealth between Black and White Americans follow the same pattern. Of particular significance is the racializ...

ABSTRACT What happens when individuals receive infusions of money-large or small? This report reviews the evidence around windfalls and other positive income jumps in varying amounts. Many factors a ect individual consumption and savings behavior in response to such infusions, such as the framing of payouts, the prior income and wealth levels of th...

This paper investigates income and wealth gaps by household incarceration history within and across racial groups using the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition. We study this in the context of 2017 Baltimore. We find that households exposed to incarceration have lower levels of income and wealth and that these differences are largest for White households....

The goal of this report is to provide a background of tax policies designed to address the racial wealth gap in the US. and to give an overview of alternative approaches and current tax policy applications at the state level, and potential scenarios that assume the application of these state-level policies applied at the Federal level. The wealth...

Introduction: Social determinants are structures and conditions in the biological, physical, built, and social environments that affect health, social and physical functioning, health risk, quality-of-life, and health outcomes. The adoption of recommended, standard measurement protocols for social determinants of health (SDoH) will advance the sci...

Abstract Importance In the US, Black individuals die younger than White individuals and have less household wealth, a legacy of slavery, ongoing discrimination, and discriminatory public policies. The role of wealth inequality in mediating racial health inequities is unclear. Objective To assess the contribution of wealth inequities to the longevi...

Dominion of the scarcity principle as the basis for economic analysis is virtually absolute in teaching the introductory course in economics. This supremacy is neither valid nor desirable. Two compelling alternative foundational concepts for economics are uncertainty and inequality. These alternatives lead to vastly different implications for the d...

Read the full introduction here: https://www.dukeupress.edu/Assets/PubMaterials/978-1-4780-1853-7_601.pdf

As COVID-19 made inroads in the United States in spring 2020, a common refrain rose above the din: “We’re all in this together.” However, the full picture was far more complicated—and far less equitable. Black and Latinx populations suffered illnesses, outbreaks, and deaths at much higher rates than the general populace. Those working in low-paid j...

This paper expands on the benefits of the Federal Job Guarantee (FDG) and offers an exploration for financing the program (Paul, et Al., 2018). The FJG is a program that supplies a tangible and sustainable solution to break the cycle of long-term poverty in America by providing quality employment options for all, especially for the most financially...

This article provides an overview of the origins and development of stratification economics as a subfield that centers the importance of identity, social ranking, and relative group position. Stratification economics developed in response to explanations for interracial/ethnic/gender inequality that invoked group-based dysfunction on the part of t...

This article provides an overview of the origins and development of stratification economics as a subfield that centers the importance of identity, social ranking, and relative group position. Stratification economics developed in response to explanations for interracial/ethnic/gender inequality that invoked group-based dysfunction on the part of t...

Using hand-collected race information about small business owners that concealed their race in Paycheck Protection Program applications, we find evidence that not disclosing race information in loan applications pays off significantly. Our results show that Black-owned businesses that concealed their race obtained 52 percent more in funding than se...

Two major procedures for establishing the monetary value of a plan for reparations for Black American descendants of US slavery are considered in this paper: 1) Enumeration of atrocities and assignment of a dollar value to each as a prelude to adding up the total, and 2) Identification of a summary measure that captures the dollar amount of the cum...

Informed by insights drawn from stratification economics and deploying dynamic game theory, we project the long-term outcome of racial/ethnic wealth disparities under multiple policy scenarios. At the core of the analysis is the character of investment individuals make in-group identity. The scenarios involve six regimes where color blindness is th...

There have been decades of research on wage gaps for groups based on their socially salient identities, such as race and gender, but little empirical investigation on the effects of holding multiple identities. Using the Current Population Survey, this study provides new evidence on intersectionality and the wage gap in the US. This article makes t...

People's social class, and the perceptions of their social class are embedded in an institutional context that has important ramifications for one's life opportunities and outcomes. Research on first impressions has found that people are relatively accurate at judging a variety of traits such as perceived sexual orientation and income, but there is...

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We conducted lab experiments at a historically black university (HBCU), replicating the design and procedure, but not the results, of previous stereotype threat studies. The experimental design has two factors: stereotype salience (priming) and the identity of the experimenter (a less-threatening black woman vs. a more-threatening white man). Unlik...

Chapter two is devoted to a systemic analysis of the comparative current statuses of African Americans vis-à-vis white Americans. It pays particular attention to the racial gulf in wealth accumulation, arguing net worth is the most powerful indicator of the intergenerational effects of white supremacy on African American economic well-being. The ch...

Building on the previous chapter, this final chapter outlines the potential structure of an actual reparations program and offers a detailed description of how best to enact a reparations program. The last two chapters taken together supply a systemic response to the customary logistical concerns raised about black reparations.

The Civil War was full of atrocities and extreme violence perpetrated against African Americans. This chapter examines this antiblack violence, paying particular attention to how the Union Army contributed to antiblack sentiment by being unwilling to incorporate African Americans who tried to or did join their ranks as equals.

Racial differences in effort at work, if they exist, can potentially explain race-based wage/earnings disparities in the labor market. The authors estimate specifications of time spent on non-work activities at work by Black and White males and females with data from the American Time Use Survey. Estimates reveal that trivially small differences oc...

People’s social class, and the perceptions of their social class are embedded in an institutional context that has important ramifications for one’s life opportunities and outcomes. Research on first impressions has found that people are relatively accurate at judging a variety of traits such as perceived sexual orientation and income, but there is...

The FHTE (From Here to Equality) Reparationist Quick Guide Response was initially established in October of 2020, as the ADOS Reparationist Quick Guide©, and is designed to be a civic engagement resource for anyone. It allows supporters to take an ownership share in our online social justice advocacy. Authorship is being encouraged from every secto...

Religiosity is a potential social determinant of obesity risk among black Americans, a group that tends to be highly religious and disproportionately suffers from this disease. Although religious engagement differs within this group, researchers often classify black Protestants into broad categories, making it challenging to determine which subgrou...

We investigate whether inequality in wealth distribution is broadly associated with adverse socioeconomic outcomes across countries. There are few studies that investigate these relationships, likely due to data limitations. On the other hand, a substantial body of work suggests that income inequality correlates with undesirable outcomes. This pape...

What does it mean to be working class in a society of extreme racial wealth inequality? Using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances, we investigate the wealth holdings of Black, Latinx, and white working-class households during the post–Great Recession (pre–COVID-19) period that spanned 2010 to 2019. We then explore the relationship between wor...

The FHTE (From Here to Equality) Reparationist Quick Guide Response was initially established in October of 2020, as the ADOS Reparationist Quick Guide©, and is designed to be a civic engagement resource for anyone. It allows supporters to take an ownership share in our online social justice advocacy. Authorship is being encouraged from every secto...

In this article, we use administrative data from three cohorts of North Carolina public high school students to examine the effects of within-school segregation on the propensity of academically eligible black high school students to take advanced math courses. Our identification strategy takes advantage of cohort-to-cohort variation in the share o...

About Us The FHTE (From Here to Equality) Reparationist Quick Guide Response was initially established in October of 2020, as the ADOS Reparationist Quick Guide©, and is designed to be a civic engagement resource for anyone. It allows supporters to take an ownership share in our online social justice advocacy. Authorship is being encouraged from...

BACKGROUND In the United States, Black Americans are suffering from a significantly disproportionate incidence of COVID-19. Going beyond mere epidemiological tallying, the potential for actual racial-justice interventions, including reparations payments, to ameliorate these disparities has not been adequately explored. METHODS We compared the COVI...

Leading economists and policymakers consider what economic tools are most effective in reversing the rise in inequality. Economic inequality is the defining issue of our time. In the United States, the wealth share of the top 1% has risen from 25% in the late 1970s to around 40% today. The percentage of children earning more than their parents has...

W.E.B. Du Bois asserted that black students are better served by attending predominantly black schools than hostile integrated schools in a context of racial discrimination. The conventional assumption is that black students benefit educationally by attending schools with more white peers, which have access to greater resources. However, the theory...

Religion and spirituality (R/S) play a central role in shaping the contextual experiences of many Black people in the United States. Blacks are among the most religiously engaged groups in the country. Levels and types of religious engagement, however, can vary by subcategories such as gender or denominational affiliation. Although R/S involvement...

We are living in eerie times, trapped in a science fiction novel we cannot escape. We cope with a deadly pandemic, disruptions in work and schooling, and the deadly effects of antiBlack police violence. In this climate, an astonishing shift has occurred in American attitudes toward Black reparations.

Prior investigations of the relationships between religious denomination and diabetes and obesity do not consider the nuance within black faith traditions. This study used data from the National Survey of American Life (n = 4344) to identify denominational and religious attendance differences in obesity and diabetes among black Christian men and wo...

Readers should note that the “95% CI” column of estimates for Model 1 was erroneously included under the Model 2 heading in Table 2 in this article as originally published.

Hypertension, a major cardiovascular disease risk factor, is disproportionately prevalent among African American young adults. Religion and spirituality (R/S) have been studied for their potential effect on blood pressure (BP) outcomes. Despite their disproportionate hypertension risk and high levels of R/S engagement, limited research explores BP...

The ADOS (American Descendants of Slavery) Reparationist Quick Guide Response is designed to be a civic engagement resource for anyone and allows supporters to take ownership of our social justice advocacy. Authorship is being encouraged from every sector and community of citizens concerned with the restorative justice of ADOS and the closing of th...

Evidence exists that the state of North Carolina’s eugenic sterilization program was racially biased insofar as it specifically targeted black Americans. In this paper, we consider the extent to which state-sanctioned eugenic sterilization in North Carolina was motivated by a desire to reduce the size of a presumably genetically unfit and unproduct...

We compare the 2018 per capita Black–White wealth gap of about US$352,250 with portions of the estimated total cost of slavery and discrimination to African American descendants of the enslaved. For the period of slavery in the United States, we arrive at estimates of about US$12 to US$13 trillion in 2018 dollars using Darity’s land-based and Marke...

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a quintessential adult educator and social justice advocate. The Highlander Research and Education Center has to its training credit Dr. King, Rosa Parks, and Septima Clark who, as attendees, learned strategies and models for adult literacy and civic engagement used to power the American Civil Rights movement. Dr. Kin...

IntroductionIn 2016, March of Dimes (MOD) launched its Prematurity Collaborative to engage a broad cross section of national experts to address persistent and widening racial disparities in preterm birth by achieving equity and demonstrated improvements in preterm birth. African-American and Native American women continue to have disproportionate r...

Background In the United States, Black Americans are suffering from significantly disproportionate incidence and mortality rates of COVID-19. The potential for racial-justice interventions, including reparations payments, to ameliorate these disparities has not been adequately explored. Methods We compared the COVID-19 time-varying Rt curves of rel...

In this paper we propose a model for understanding the under-enrollment of black students in advanced courses that demonstrates how group differences in educational investment decisions can arise even in the absence of any group-level differences in underlying incentives or behavioral propensities. In our model, students gain peer group acceptance...