PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Goldsmith, Arthur H.
AU  - Hamilton, Darrick
AU  - Darity, William
TI  - From Dark to Light: Skin Color and Wages Among African-Americans
AID  - 10.3368/jhr.XLII.4.701
DP  - 2007 Oct 02
TA  - Journal of Human Resources
PG  - 701--738
VI  - XLII
IP  - 4
4099  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/XLII/4/701.short
4100  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/XLII/4/701.full
SO  - J Hum Resour2007 Oct 02; XLII
AB  - This paper develops and tests a theory, referred to as “preference for whiteness,” which predicts that the interracial (white-black) and intraracial wage gap widens as the skin shade of the black worker darkens. Using data drawn from the Multi City Study of Urban Inequality and the National Survey of Black Americans, we report evidence largely consistent with the theory. Moreover, we decompose the estimated interracial and intraracial wage gaps, and find that favorable treatment of lighter-skinned workers is a major source of interracial and intraracial wage differences as predicted by the theory.