This website uses cookies.

By clicking the "Accept" button or continuing to browse our site, you agree to first-party and session-only cookies being stored on your device to enhance site navigation and analyze site performance and traffic. For more information on our use of cookies, please see our Privacy Policy.

  1. Home
  2. Journals
  3. American Economic Review
  4. May 2016
  5. Religious Workers' Density and the Racial Earnings Gap

American Economic Review

ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)

Religious Workers' Density and the Racial Earnings Gap

  • Fernando Lozano
  • Jessica Shiwen Cheng
American Economic Review
vol. 106, no. 5, May 2016
(pp. 355–59)
Download Full Text PDF

Abstract

We explore differences between Black and White Non-Hispanic workers in the relationship between childhood exposure to religious workers and a worker's labor market outcomes thirty years later. We identify this relationship by exploiting two sources of variation: we use changes in the number of religious workers within states, and we use states' differences by following workers who moved to a different state. Our results suggest that a one percent increase in the number of clergy increases the earnings of Black workers by a range from 0.027 to 0.082 percent relative to the increase in the earnings of White workers.

Citation

Lozano, Fernando, and Jessica Shiwen Cheng. 2016. "Religious Workers' Density and the Racial Earnings Gap." American Economic Review, 106 (5): 355–59. DOI: 10.1257/aer.p20161116

Additional Materials

JEL Classification

  • J15 Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
  • J31 Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
  • J61 Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
  • R23 Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics: Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population; Neighborhood Characteristics
  • Z12 Cultural Economics: Religion