Courtsey of New Scientist
Luckily for Barack Obama, the US president's salary doesn't depend on who gets elected. A study of racial discrimination in the US workplace suggests that mixed-race Americans are discriminated against just as much as black people in terms of salary.
Economist Robert Fairlie at the University of California at Santa Cruz examined the US census for 2000 - the first to include the "mixed race" option for ethnicity. The census also questioned people about their earnings.
Fairlie reckoned that if racial discrimination in the US is aimed at anyone with a trace of black ancestry, rather than mainly at black people, then people with a mix of black and white ancestry would be likely to earn about the same as black people, and less than white people (Labour Economics, DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2009.01.003).
That is exactly what he found. An analysis of more than 3 million respondents revealed the average pay was $15.74 per hour for people of mixed race, $17.39 for black people and $22.04 for white people. This was despite the fact that 18 per cent of mixed-race people had college degrees, compared with 11 per cent of black people and 28 per cent of white people.
The wage gap remained even after Fairlie controlled for factors such as age and socioeconomic conditions.
