1 00:00:02,033 --> 00:00:04,700 HARI SREENIVASAN: New research finds class matters a lot less in America when it comes 2 00:00:04,700 --> 00:00:07,600 to economic mobility for black males. 3 00:00:07,600 --> 00:00:12,600 Income inequality is often cited as an important factor in holding people back, but a new analysis 4 00:00:14,566 --> 00:00:18,333 suggests black boys and black men face economic disadvantages even if they start off from 5 00:00:20,200 --> 00:00:22,400 a similar point of income and wealth as their white counterparts. 6 00:00:22,400 --> 00:00:25,333 Yamiche Alcindor is back with our conversation. 7 00:00:25,333 --> 00:00:30,333 YAMICHE ALCINDOR: A new study released this week underscores just how big a gap African-American 8 00:00:31,766 --> 00:00:34,866 males face when it comes to moving up the economic ladder. 9 00:00:34,866 --> 00:00:37,200 Some of the findings are dramatic. 10 00:00:37,200 --> 00:00:41,400 White boys who grew up in rich households are likely to remain that way. 11 00:00:41,400 --> 00:00:45,366 Black boys who are also raised at the top are more likely to become poor, instead of 12 00:00:45,366 --> 00:00:48,733 staying wealthy in their own adult households. 13 00:00:48,733 --> 00:00:53,466 Black boys fare worse than white boys in 99 percent of America, even when children grow 14 00:00:53,466 --> 00:00:57,666 up next to each other, with parents who earn similar incomes. 15 00:00:57,666 --> 00:01:01,133 Raj Chetty of Stanford University is one of the co-authors of this study. 16 00:01:01,133 --> 00:01:02,866 He joins me now. 17 00:01:02,866 --> 00:01:05,233 Thank you so much, Raj, for being here. 18 00:01:05,233 --> 00:01:09,900 This report seems to indicate that black men will fare worse than white men even if they 19 00:01:09,900 --> 00:01:12,433 are raised in households with similar incomes. 20 00:01:12,433 --> 00:01:14,433 Can you explain what's happening there? 21 00:01:14,433 --> 00:01:16,566 RAJ CHETTY, Professor of Economics, Stanford University: Yes, so one of the most striking 22 00:01:16,566 --> 00:01:21,566 findings of the study to us was that, even if you take black and white boys raised in 23 00:01:23,566 --> 00:01:27,000 families at exactly the same income level, even at high income levels, you see that black 24 00:01:27,000 --> 00:01:31,000 boys end up with very different outcomes on average relative to white men. 25 00:01:31,000 --> 00:01:33,066 They're less likely to complete high school. 26 00:01:33,066 --> 00:01:37,566 They're less likely to go to college, to have significantly lower earnings in adulthood. 27 00:01:37,566 --> 00:01:41,900 And that phenomenon, interestingly, applies really only to black men. 28 00:01:41,900 --> 00:01:46,600 When we look at black vs. white women, but see much more similarity in their outcomes 29 00:01:46,600 --> 00:01:48,700 if they grew up in families of similar incomes. 30 00:01:48,700 --> 00:01:53,700 So it's something unique to what's happening to black men in America that I think is really 31 00:01:55,600 --> 00:01:59,266 a concern for generations going forward in terms of perpetuating inequality by race. 32 00:02:00,933 --> 00:02:02,966 YAMICHE ALCINDOR: And that inequality is really striking to me. 33 00:02:02,966 --> 00:02:07,900 One of the things the study reports is that African-American men who grow up in households 34 00:02:09,800 --> 00:02:13,466 with two parents that are earning $140,000, they fare about the same as a white young 35 00:02:14,900 --> 00:02:18,366 man who is raised by a single mother making just $60,000. 36 00:02:18,366 --> 00:02:21,300 How can that be true, because it feels so counterintuitive? 37 00:02:21,300 --> 00:02:24,000 And what does that mean for African-American families and their futures? 38 00:02:24,000 --> 00:02:28,066 RAJ CHETTY: Yes, what you're getting at really is the finding that there's a great deal of 39 00:02:28,066 --> 00:02:30,733 downward mobility in black families. 40 00:02:30,733 --> 00:02:34,166 So, you would have thought intuitively -- that is what we expected going in -- is, when you 41 00:02:34,166 --> 00:02:38,666 get to a certain income level, maybe racial disparities disappear, that at some point 42 00:02:38,666 --> 00:02:40,600 kind of escape the poverty trap. 43 00:02:40,600 --> 00:02:42,866 But that really doesn't seem to be the case. 44 00:02:42,866 --> 00:02:47,500 Even once your parents reach a high income level, it continues to be the case that black 45 00:02:47,500 --> 00:02:51,900 men have higher odds of essentially ending up in the bottom of the income distribution 46 00:02:51,900 --> 00:02:54,100 than staying at the top of the income distribution. 47 00:02:54,100 --> 00:02:59,100 And that's why you get this pattern that black men's outcomes look comparable to white men 48 00:03:00,566 --> 00:03:02,566 growing up in relatively low- or middle-income families. 49 00:03:02,566 --> 00:03:05,600 YAMICHE ALCINDOR: You mentioned in the study that there are unique obstacles that black 50 00:03:05,600 --> 00:03:07,533 men face. 51 00:03:07,533 --> 00:03:09,733 Are we -- just to be clear, are we talking about racism and racial bias? 52 00:03:09,733 --> 00:03:12,966 And what are those unique obstacles that black men in particular face? 53 00:03:12,966 --> 00:03:14,966 RAJ CHETTY: Yes. 54 00:03:14,966 --> 00:03:17,433 So, to try to get at that, we look at how this varies across different parts of the 55 00:03:17,433 --> 00:03:21,733 country, so look neighborhood by neighborhood, and ask, are there some neighborhoods in America 56 00:03:21,733 --> 00:03:26,600 where you see small black-white gaps, or perhaps black men doing better than white men? 57 00:03:26,600 --> 00:03:29,933 And, surprisingly, you find essentially no such areas. 58 00:03:29,933 --> 00:03:34,933 In 99 percent of neighborhoods in America, you see better outcomes for white men than 59 00:03:35,533 --> 00:03:37,533 black men. 60 00:03:37,533 --> 00:03:40,900 Now, digging in deeper, you can ask, where do we see relatively good outcomes for black 61 00:03:40,900 --> 00:03:42,533 men? 62 00:03:42,533 --> 00:03:44,500 And there are a couple of factors that pop out from that analysis. 63 00:03:44,500 --> 00:03:49,100 One, you see that areas with larger rates of father presence in homes among black men, 64 00:03:50,800 --> 00:03:52,833 you have better outcomes for black boys there. 65 00:03:52,833 --> 00:03:57,833 So, if there are more two-parent families, particularly among African-American households, 66 00:03:58,933 --> 00:04:00,966 you see better outcomes for black boys. 67 00:04:00,966 --> 00:04:04,800 And, second, you see that areas with lower levels of racial bias among whites tend to 68 00:04:04,800 --> 00:04:06,866 have outcomes for black men. 69 00:04:06,866 --> 00:04:11,233 So those are a couple of factor that I think could be associated with these better outcomes. 70 00:04:11,233 --> 00:04:15,166 But I think more remains to be understood in terms of exactly what's driving these really 71 00:04:15,166 --> 00:04:16,166 sharp differences. 72 00:04:16,166 --> 00:04:18,233 YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Gotcha. 73 00:04:18,233 --> 00:04:20,833 And I want to talk about the differences between black women and black men. 74 00:04:20,833 --> 00:04:24,900 There are some critiques out there, critics of the study out there that are arguing that 75 00:04:24,900 --> 00:04:29,066 black women who don't have long-term incomes weren't counted in your study. 76 00:04:29,066 --> 00:04:31,100 Is that accurate? 77 00:04:31,100 --> 00:04:33,666 And could you talk a little bit about your findings of black women and the data that 78 00:04:33,666 --> 00:04:34,933 you used? 79 00:04:34,933 --> 00:04:37,000 RAJ CHETTY: Yes, so we include everyone. 80 00:04:37,000 --> 00:04:41,900 So, the power of the study is that we're able to track, using anonymized data, about 20 81 00:04:41,900 --> 00:04:46,900 million Americans from birth to adulthood, people born in the early 1980s whose incomes 82 00:04:48,100 --> 00:04:49,600 we're looking at, in their late 30s. 83 00:04:49,600 --> 00:04:51,700 And that includes everyone, whether you're working or not. 84 00:04:51,700 --> 00:04:54,233 Every single person is counted. 85 00:04:54,233 --> 00:04:57,633 And so, if you're not working, you're assigned an income of zero and you're counted in the 86 00:04:57,633 --> 00:04:59,666 study. 87 00:04:59,666 --> 00:05:03,500 And what we show is that, even taking that into account, black women, conditional on 88 00:05:03,500 --> 00:05:08,500 growing up in a family that is at the same income level as white women, they end up with 89 00:05:09,233 --> 00:05:11,733 very similar outcomes. 90 00:05:11,733 --> 00:05:14,433 They have similar levels of earnings, similar wage rates, similar college attendance rates. 91 00:05:14,433 --> 00:05:16,533 They work at similar rates. 92 00:05:16,533 --> 00:05:20,900 So, it's really remarkable how, for women, you don't see that much of a black-white disparity. 93 00:05:22,666 --> 00:05:24,733 Very starkly different from men. 94 00:05:24,733 --> 00:05:29,066 Now, I should emphasize that doesn't mean that women are living in households with the 95 00:05:29,066 --> 00:05:34,066 same income levels, because black women tend to be married to men who are black who have 96 00:05:34,900 --> 00:05:36,466 lower incomes. 97 00:05:36,466 --> 00:05:38,966 And they also are married at lower rates. 98 00:05:38,966 --> 00:05:42,900 And so if you look at household income, of course, you do see a significant disparity 99 00:05:42,900 --> 00:05:44,533 between black women and white women. 100 00:05:44,533 --> 00:05:47,266 But when you look at their own earnings, they look very similar. 101 00:05:47,266 --> 00:05:50,900 YAMICHE ALCINDOR: And then I guess I have one quick question, which is, tell me a little 102 00:05:50,900 --> 00:05:52,933 bit about the solutions here. 103 00:05:52,933 --> 00:05:56,200 You mention in the study that mentoring might be a possibility, that there might be some 104 00:05:56,200 --> 00:05:57,666 policy changes. 105 00:05:57,666 --> 00:06:00,366 What do you have to say about how this could change? 106 00:06:00,366 --> 00:06:02,900 RAJ CHETTY: Yes. 107 00:06:02,900 --> 00:06:05,500 So, in thinking about the solutions, I think it's very important to remember that you continue 108 00:06:05,500 --> 00:06:10,433 to see these disparities even among kids growing up on the same street, going to the same schools, 109 00:06:11,033 --> 00:06:13,633 and so on. 110 00:06:13,633 --> 00:06:16,500 And so, often, solutions people think of are things like, we need to create greater opportunities 111 00:06:18,433 --> 00:06:21,533 for black and white kids to grow up in the same neighborhoods, to attend the same schools 112 00:06:21,533 --> 00:06:26,533 and so forth, to reduce residential or physical segregation in America. 113 00:06:29,033 --> 00:06:31,200 And while I think that can be extremely valuable, what this study shows is, you need to do more 114 00:06:31,200 --> 00:06:33,266 than that. 115 00:06:33,266 --> 00:06:36,666 Even among kids growing up in the same area, you need to create the same opportunities 116 00:06:36,666 --> 00:06:39,600 for black men to thrive as you see for white men. 117 00:06:39,600 --> 00:06:43,600 That could involve things like mentoring programs, for example, like the My Brother's Keeper 118 00:06:43,600 --> 00:06:47,766 Program, targeted at low-income men to give them pathways to success. 119 00:06:47,766 --> 00:06:50,700 It could involve efforts to try to reduce racial bias. 120 00:06:50,700 --> 00:06:55,500 It could involve efforts to try to create more racial integration within schools and 121 00:06:55,500 --> 00:06:58,833 within neighborhoods, so black and white kids have similar opportunities. 122 00:06:58,833 --> 00:07:01,200 YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Thank you so much, Raj, for joining me. 123 00:07:01,200 --> 00:07:02,300 I really appreciate it. 124 00:07:02,300 --> 00:07:03,500 RAJ CHETTY: My pleasure. 125 00:07:03,500 --> 00:07:04,133 Thank you.