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The Gendered Impacts of Perceived Skin Tone: Evidence from African American Siblings in 1870-1940

Ran Abramitzky, Jacob Conway, Roy Mill, Luke C.D. Stein · 2026 · arXiv (Cornell University)

DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2610.10606 · cited by 0 works (OpenAlex) · open-access PDF

Chinese

我们研究了由非洲裔美国人在19世纪末和20世纪初使用全数美国十年人口普查数据对经济结果的差异,并将这些儿童在人口普查中联系起来,我们首先记录了在非洲裔美国人中获得教育和收入的较大差距,因为黑色和较轻的感知皮肤色调。为了脱离这些差距的驱动者,我们识别了所有35992个家庭,其中编号分配了不同黑色/Mulatto分类的同性兄弟姐妹。 与代码为Mulatto编码的姐妹相比,在非洲裔美国人中获得教育的差距较低,他们不太可能结婚,并且有较少受教育的,可能有较低收入的家庭丈夫。

Machine translation (Meta M2M100); the English original follows.

Abstract

We study differences in economic outcomes by perceived skin tone among African Americans using full-count U.S. decennial census data from the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Comparing children coded as "Black" or "Mulatto" by census enumerators and linking these children across population censuses, we first document large gaps in educational attainment and income among African Americans with darker and lighter perceived skin tones. To disentangle the drivers of these gaps, we identify all 35,992 families in which enumerators assigned same-gender siblings different Black/Mulatto classifications. Relative to sisters coded as Mulatto, sisters coded as Black had lower educational attainment, were less likely to marry, and had less-educated, likely lower-earning husbands. These patterns are consistent with more severe contemporaneous discrimination against African American women with darker perceived skin tones. In contrast, we find similar educational attainment, marital outcomes, and incomes among differently-classified brothers. Men perceived as African Americans of any skin tone faced similar contemporaneous discrimination, consistent with the "one-drop" racial classification rule that grouped together individuals with any known Black ancestry. Lower incomes for African American men perceived as having darker skin tone in the general population were driven by differences in opportunities and resources that varied across families, likely reflecting the impacts of historical or family-level discrimination.

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Topics: Educational attainment, African american, Census, Demography, Population, Psychology

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