Darity, William A. Jr.. 1982. "The Human Capital Approach to Black-White Earnings Inequality: Some Unsettled Questions." Journal of Human Resources 17(1):72-93.

The persistence of earnings differences between blacks and whites in the United States has been a topic that has received a substantial amount of attention in both theoretical and empirical research in economics. The differential in earnings typically is tied to racial differences in human capital accumulation. This paper advances a systematic critique of the human capital approach to black-white inequality. Inadequacies are identified in human capital theory as a general theory of inequality as well as a specific theory of racial inequality. The critique suggests that a serious analysis of the black-white earnings gap will require an entirely new approach to the study of racial income inequality.

The author is Associate Professor of Economics, University of Texas at Austin.
* This paper was completed while the author was a visiting assistant professor at the University of Maryland and research associate with the National Urban League Research Department. Thanks are due to the Luce Foundation and the University Research Institute at the University of Texas at Austin for support. I also appreciate many helpful comments from Marcus Alexis, Barbara Bergmann, Robert Hill, Barbara Jones, Allan King, Glenn Loury, Stanley Masters, Kirsten Mullen, and Samuel Myers, Jr., as well as students in seminars at the AEA Summer Program at Northwestern University and Clark and Spelman Colleges in Atlanta, GA.

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US ISSN 0022-166X

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