ABSTRACT
The observation that blacks earn less than otherwise comparable whites has long been an established "stylized fact" for workers in the US The Abigail Thernstroms have most visibly challenged the validity of this "stylized fact" and, in turn, the view that black workers are subject to wage discrimination. They argue that poor scholarship—research that neglects the influence of cognitive ability on wages—is responsible for this finding. The chapter provides evidence consistent with an important adverse discriminatory affect on black worker wages. Most economists believe that a person's human capital—education, experience, and cognitive ability—are the primary determinant of their personal productivity. The coefficient estimates on each of three different types of human capital are positive and significant in both the data set primarily composed of people at a very early stage of their working life-cycle and the data set containing more mature individuals.
