Abstract
Studies have shown that differences in wage-determinant skills between blacks and whites emerge during a child’s infancy, highlighting the roles of parental characteristics and investment decisions. Exploring the genetics of skin-color and models of intrahousehold allocations, I present evidence that, controlling for observed and unobserved parental characteristics, light-skinned children are more likely to receive investments in formal education than their dark-skinned siblings. Conscious parental decisions regarding human capital acquisition for their children seem to contribute for the persistence of earnings differentials and socio-economic stratification in Brazil.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Bertrand and Mullainathan (2004) provide experimental evidence that (randomly selected) firms in the United States are less likely to interview job-applicants with distinctively black names (see also Fryer and Levitt, 2004a). An emergent literature in the social sciences connects complexion to socio-economic outcomes, Goldsmith et al. (2007), Gyimah-Brempong and Price (2006), Hersch (2006), Hunter et al. (2001) and Keith and Herring (1991) all find suggestive evidence of a complexion gap in terms of wages, legal punishments, education and unemployment among African Americans. Hamermesh et al. (1994) and Biddle and Hamermesh (1998) find evidence of appearance premia. Their reasoning could also be applied to hair curliness, nose width, lip thickness, steatopygia (accumulation of fat on the buttocks), and to any of the physical traits that can be linked to membership in the black or white ethnic groups. In fact, when the Apartheid regime was introduced in South Africa, skin color and physical traits were used in combination to establish the classification system imposed by government officials.
There is anecdotal evidence that skin color also plays a role in social hierarchization among Latin Americans of indigenous decent (mestizos) as well as among populations in South and Southeast Asia. Most studies are specific to the experience of those populations in the US (see Herring et al 2004, and Allen et al 2000). Hall (1995) mentions in passing the role of skin color among the Indian Hindus. The present study is solely focused on the color gradation originated by the mixing of European whites and African blacks, and remains silent with respect to the impact of skin color among those other populations.
See Alexander et al. (2001) for a three-country perspective. See also Herring et al. (2004) and Telles (2005) on the North-American and Brazilian experiences. Analysis of US historical data can be seen in Bodenhorn (2003), Bodenhorn and Ruebeck (2005), Dollard (1937), Freeman et al. (1966), Hill (2000), Ransford (1970), Reuter (1918) and Seeman (1946).
See Burton et al. (2010), Campbell and Eggerling-Campbell and Eggerling-Boeck (2006), Fryer (2006) and Lopez (2003) for a discussion on the rapid growth of mixed-race families in the United States. The United Kingdom has one of the fastest growing mixed-race populations in the world, fuelled by the continuing rise of inter-ethnic relationships − see the National Survey for Ethnic Minorities. In fact, the 2001 British census even offered specific mixed-race categories. See also Platt (2007).
This reasoning follows the case of intrahousehold gender differentials. See Behrman et al. (1986 and 1982) and Behrman (1988).
There are data sets in the United States that contain information on skin color. Historical censuses (1850 to 1930) use the mulatto classification. Most variations within families in those data come from children fathered by different men, however. Others like the National Survey of Black Americans collected information on three generations: child, parent and grandparent. These do not provide information on siblings that I explore in the present study. More recently, the National Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health) has collected skin color information on their main teen-respondent, again not providing information on siblings’ color. The New Immigrant Survey of 2003 also collected information on skin color. Finally, NLSY97 has recently included a skin-color module to its 13th round of data collection.
See Sheshinski and Weiss (1982) for an insightful exposition.
Interest on the intrafamily impact of phenotypic differences goes beyond socioeconomic studies, however. Psychologists have shown that the sense of identity and group membership for children at young ages is a very important aspect of their non-cognitive development. In mixed-race families variations in skin color may directly impact children and their identification with respect to different cultures and peers. See (Brunsma 2005), Rockquemore and Laszloffy (), and Shih and Sanchez (2005). See interesting work in economics on this particular topic by Ruebeck et al. (2008).
In fact, until the 1990’s, on both censuses and household surveys the question was literally phrased as “what is your skin-color?,” without any explicit reference to race.
A possible explanation for the difference between males and females in terms of skin-color differentials is the occupational structure of the Brazilian economy.
These differences conform with the ones in terms of coefficient of variation. White males face a 7.6% variability while non-whites face a 11.6% one. Among women the contrast is more muted, with variability being 8.2 and 9.8% for whites and non-whites, respectively.
Most recent breakthrough in this area was published in December 2005, see Lamason-et. al 2005 - Science Vol 310, pp.1782-1786. The article presents evidence that the gene SLC24A5 accounts for between 25 and 38 percent of the skin color differences between Europeans and Africans.
Some biology studies suggest that female and younger children are more likely to be lighter than males and older children. This may very well reflect conscious decisions by parents, using specific stopping rules and targeting a particular color composition of their progeny (I further discuss this in the conclusion and in a companion paper). There is also evidence that only after the 6th month of age children will have their adult-life skin color defined. See Sturm et al. (1998) and Park and Lee (2005). Although mothers reporting skin color for their children would most likely report and “average” tone against a common standard, in the empirical exercises below, when comparing children of white and non-white skin, I always control for age and gender in order to net out the impact of the latter on skin color classification.
For the sake of comparison I have examined the case of gender differentials using the same data. In this case, for families with boys and girls, the difference in enrollment rates is 2.28% in favor of girls (with or without family controls). Family fixed effects only reduce this difference to 2.18%, indicating that 96% of the original difference is accounted for intra-family discrimination in schooling investments. Studies of gender differentials in Brazil have consistently pointed to differences in opportunity costs as an explanation for these findings (active child-labor market induces boys to drop-out of school to work).
I have investigated if the difference was a function of parental color mixing. In an fully interacted regression, color mixing, as oppose to same-color parents, imply no significant (yet negative) differential impact on the measured differences between white and non-white siblings.
Moreover, the impact of lightening the skin color of the male head is differentially negative when compared with lightening the mother’s skin color. This means that lighter male heads tend to favor darker children, while the opposite is true when mothers have lighter skin. Estimates available upon request.
This strategy is similar to the inclusion of the lagged dependent variable in cross-sectional analyses as a proxy for unobservable characteristics.
It may also reflect differences in marriage market competitiveness that tend to favor non-white women rather than non-white men (i.e., non-white women have more sex-appeal in Brazil). Data from the 1995 Data Folha Pool on Skin Color and Race Issues (Pesquisa 300 Anos de Zumbi, Data Folha) indicates for example that 40% of male whites report non-white women as more desirable sexual partners (versus 44% indiferent) while the corresponding numbers for female whites are 22% and 64%. The corresponing numbers for the overall population (including non-white choices) are 52%/41% among men and 38%/55% among women. See Hamilton et al. (2009) for the analysis of complexion and marriage markets in the US.
All the comparisons between non-white males and females are based on within school-graduation cohort variation.
One could imagine that skin color of older siblings could be used as instruments on a first-difference estimation of within family differentials. I am reluctant to assume that such instrument is valid because child-level unobservable characteristics are likely to be correlated among siblings. In any case, when I attempted such strategy results were the same as the ones presented, with first-stage having t-stats for the instrument of around 8.
A particular difference between the present case and stopping rules and sex preferences is that parents may update their beliefs regarding the probability of having light children as they procreate (since the exact racial mix is not perfectly know by all parts involved).
References
Alexander N, Guimarâes A, Hamilton C, Huntley L, James W. Beyond racism: race and inequality in Brazil, South Africa, and the United States. Boulder: L. Rienner Publisher; 2001.
Allen W, Telles E, Hunter M. Skin Color, Income and Education: A Comparison of African Americans and Mexican Americans. Int J Sociol 2000;12:129–180.
Arias O, Tejerina L. 2004. Education, Family Background and Racial Earnings Inequality in Brazil, manuscript, Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, DC, USA.
Barsh GS. What controls variation in human skin color? PLoS Biol 2003;1(1):e27.
Becker G, Tomes N, Vol. 84. Child endowments and the quantity and quality of children; 1976, pp. S143–S162. Part 2: Essays in labor economics in honor of H. Gregg Lewis.
Behrman J. Intrahousehold allocation of nutrients in rural india: are boys favored? Do parents exhibit inequality aversion? 1988;40(1):32–54.
Behrman J, Pollak R, Taubman P. Do Parents Favor Boys?. Int Econ Rev 1986;27(1):33–54.
Behrman J, Pollak R, Taubman P. Parental preferences and provision for progeny. J Polit Econ 1982;90(1):52–73.
Beltrao Kaizo. 2002. Acesso a Educacao: Diferenciais entre os Sexos, IPEA Texto para Discussao No. 879.
Bertrand M, Mullainathan S. Are Emily and Brendan more employable than Latoya and Tyrone? Evidence on racial discrimination in the labor market from a large randomized experiment. Am Econ Rev 2004;94(4):991–1013.
Biddle J, Hamermesh D. Beauty, productivity, and discrimination: lawyers’ looks and lucre. J Labor Econ 1998;16(1):172–201.
Bodenhorn H, Ruebeck C. 2005. Colorism and African-American wealth, evidence from the nineteenth- century south, forthcoming in journal of population economics.
Bodenhorn H. The complexion gap: the economic consequences of color among free african americans in the rural antebellum South, Vol. 2. In: Kauffman KD, editor. Advances in agricultural economic history: Amsterdam: Elsevier Science North-Holland; 2003, pp. 41–73.
Bonilla-Silva E. We are all Americans!: the latin americanization of racial stratification in the USA. Race and Soc 2002;5:3–16.
Brunsma D. Interracial families and the racial identification of mixed-race children: evidence from the early childhood longitudinal study. Soc Forces 2005;84(2):1131–1157.
Burton L, Bonilla-Silva E, Ray V, Buckelew R, Freeman E. Critical race theories, colorism, and the decadeâĂZs research on families of color. J Marriage Fam 2010;72:440–459.
Campante F, Crespo A, Leite P. Wage inequality across races in brazilian urban labor markets: regional aspects. Rev Bras Econ 2004;58(2):185–210.
Campbell ME. A rainbow divide? Racial stratification in a multiracial context, unpublished manuscript: University of Wisconsin at Madison; 2007.
Campbell ME, Eggerling-Boeck J. What about the children? The sychological and social well-being of multiracial adolescents. Sociol Q 2006;47(1):147–173.
Carneiro P, Cunha F, Heckman J. 2004. The technology of skill formation, 2004 meeting papers 681, Society for Economic Dynamics.
Carneiro P, Heckman J, Masterov D. Labor market discrimination and racial differences in premarket factors. J Law Econ 2005;48(1):1–40.
Carvalho-Silva DR, Santos FR, Rocha J, Pena S. The phylogeography of brazilian Y-chromosome ineages. Am J Hum Genet 2001;68:281–286.
Case, Anne, Lin I-Fen, McLanahan S. Household resource allocation in stepfamilies: Darwin reflects on the plight of cinderella. Am Econ Rev 1999;LXXXIX(2):234–248.
Charles K, Luoh M. 2006. Male incarceration, the marriage market and female outcomes. Unpublished manuscript.
Daly M, Margo W. The truth about cinderella: a darwinian view of parental love. Yale University Press; 1998.
Diamond J. Race without color. Discov 1994;15(11).
Dollard J. Caste and class in a Southern Town: Yale University Press; 1937.
Dunn LC, Dobzhansky T. Heredity, race and society: a scientific explanation of human differences: Mentor New American Library Publisher; 1958.
Freeman H, Armor D, Ross JM, Pettigrew TJ. Color gradation and attitudes among middle income negroes. Am Sociol Rev 1966;3(1):365–374.
Fryer R. 2006. Guess who’s been coming to dinner? Trends in interracial marriage over the 20th century forthcoming in Journal of Economic Perspectives.
Fryer R, Levitt S. Causes and consequences of distinctive black names. Q J Econ 2004a;119(3):767–805.
Fryer R, Levitt S. Understanding the black-white test score gap in the first two years of school. Rev Econ Stat 2004b;86(2):447–464.
Gans H. The possibility of a new racial hierarchy in the 21st-century United States. In: Lamont M, editor. The Cultural territories of Race. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 2006, pp. 371–390.
Goldsmith A, Hamilton D, Darity Jr W. From dark to light: skin color and wages among African-Americans. J Hum Resour 2007;42(4):701–738.
Goldsmith A, Hamilton D, Darity Jr W. Does a foot-in-the-door matter? White-nonwhite differences in the wage return to tenure and prior workplace experience. South Econ J 2006;73(2):267–306.
Gyimah-Brempong K, Price G. Crime and punishment: and skin hue too? Am Econ Rev 2006;96(2):246–250.
Hall R. The bleaching syndrome: African Americans’ response to cultural domination Vis-A-Vis skin color. J Black Stud 1995;26:172–184.
Hamermesh D, Biddle J, Beauty and the labor market. Am Econ Rev 1994;84(5):1174–1194.
Hamilton D, Goldsmith A, Darity Jr W. Shedding Light on Marriage: The Influence of Skin shade on Marriage for Black Females. J Econ Behav Organ 2009;72(1):30–50.
Heckman J. Detecting Discrimination. J Econ Perspect 1998;12(2):101–116.
Herring C, Keith VM, Horton HD. Skin Deep: How Race and Complexion Matter in the Color-Blind Era. Chicago: University of Illinois Press; 2004.
Hersch J. 2006. Skin Color and Wages Among New U.S. Immigrants Unpublished manuscript.
Hill M. Color Differences in the Socioeconomic Status of African American Men: Results of a Longitudinal Study. Soc Forces 2000;78(4):1437–1460.
Hunter M. The Consequences of Colorism. In: Hall R, editor. The Melanin Millennium: Skin Color as 21st Century International Discourse: Springer; 2013.
Hunter M, Allen W, Telles E. The Significance of Skin Color among African Americans and Mexican Americans. Afr Am Res Perspect 2001;7(1):173–184.
Keith V, Herring C. Skin Tone and Stratification in the Black Community. Am J Soc 1991;97:760–778.
King J. The Biology of Race: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publisher; 1971.
Kreisman D, Rangel MA. 2014. On the Blurring of the Color Line: Wages and employment for Black males of different skin tones, The Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming.
Lamason RL, Mohideen M-APK, Mest JR, Wong AC, Norton HL, Aros MC, Jurynec MJ, Mao X, Humphreville VR, Humbert JE, Sinha S., Moore JL, Jagadeeswaran P, Zhao W, Ning G, Makalowska I, McKeigue PM, O’Donnell D, Kittles R, Parra EJ, Mangini NJ, Grunwald DJ, Shriver MD, Canfield VA, Cheng KC. SLC24A5, a Putative Cation Exchanger, Affects Pigmentation in Zebrafish and Human, Science 2005;310(5755):1782–1786.
Lazear E. Family Background and Optimal Schooling Decisions. Rev Econ Stat 1980;62(1):42–51.
Levhari D, Weiss Y. The Effect of Risk on the Investment in Human Capital. Am Econ Rev 1974;64(6):950–963.
Lopez A. Mixed-race school-age children: a summary of census 2000 data. Educ Res 2003;32(6):25–37.
Mangino W. Race to College: The Reverse Gap. Race Soc Probl 2010;2:164–178.
Mason P. Race, culture, and skill: interracial wage differences among african Americans, Latinos, and Whites. Rev Black Polit Econ 1997;25(3):5–39.
McLanahan Sara, Sandefur G. Growing Up with a single parent: what hurts, what helps. (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1994).
Neal D, Johnson W. The role of premarket factors in black-white age differences. J Polit Econ 1996;104(5):869–895.
Park J, Lee M. A study of skin color by Melanin index according to site, gestational age, birth-weight and season of birth in Korean Neonates. J KoreanMedical Sci 2005;20:105–108.
Parra EJ, Kittles RA, Shriver MD. Implications of correlations betweeen skin color and genetic ancestry for biomedical reserach. Nat Genet Suppl 2004;36(11).
Pena S, Carvalho-Silva D, Alves-Silva J, Prado V, Santos F. Retrato molecular do Brazil. Ciencia Hoje 200;27:159.
Perry G, Arias O, Loópez J H, Maloney W, Servén L. 2006. Poverty reduction and growth:virtuous and vicious circles. The world bank.
Platt L. Poverty and ethnicity in the UK: Policy Press.; 2007.
Ransford E. Skin color, life chances and anti-white attitudes. Soc Probl 1970;18:164–178.
Rees J. Genetics of hair and skin color. Annu Rev Genet 2003;37:67–90.
Relethford J. Hemispheric difference in human skin color. Am J Phys Anthropol 1997;104:449–457.
Reuter E. In: Richard G, editor. The mulatto in the United States: including a study of the role of mixed blood races throughout the world: Badger Publisher; 1918.
Rockquemore K, Laszloffy E: Altamira Press; 2005.
Rosenzweig M, Schultz TP. Market opportunities, genetic endowments, and intrafamily resource distribution: child survival in rural India. Am Econ Rev 1982;72(4):803–815.
Ruebeck C, Averett S, Bodenhorn H. 2008. Acting white or acting black: mixed-race adolescents’ identity and behavior. Unpublished manuscrip, Lafayette College.
Seeman M, Vol. 11,. Skin color values in three all-negro school classes; 1946, pp. 315-321.
Sheshinski E, Weiss Y. Inequality within and between families. J Political Econ 1982;90(1):105–127.
Shih M, Sanchez D. Perspectives and research on the positive and negative implications of having multiple racial identities. Psychol Bull 2005;131:569–591.
Sturm R, Box N, Ramsay M. Human pigmentation genetics: the difference is only skin deep. BioEssay 1998;20:712–721.
Telles E. Race in another America: the significance of skin color in Brazil: Princeton University Press.; 2005.
United Nations. 2005. Brazil: national human development eport New York and Brasilia.
Yancey G. Racial justice in a Black/Nonblack society. In: Brunsma D, editor.Mixed messages: multiracial identities in the color blind Era: Boulder, CO; Rienner; 2006, pp. 49–62.
Zvoch K. Family type and investment in education: a comparison of genetic and stepparent families. Evol Hum Behav 1999;XX. 435–464.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Appendix:
Appendix:
About this article
Cite this article
Rangel, M.A. Is Parental Love Colorblind? Human Capital Accumulation within Mixed Families. Rev Black Polit Econ 42, 57–86 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12114-014-9190-1
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12114-014-9190-1