Samuel L. Myers

Racial disproportionality in reported and substained child abuse and nelgect: an examination of systematic bias

Using data from Minnesota fo 2000, we show that measures of discrimination in maltreatment substantiation are inflated by a failure to disaggegate counties with large minority populations from those with small minority populations. Racial disparities in substantiaion rates, conditional upon reports to child protective service workers, are not huge. Nonetheless, measures of discrimination -- once one accounts for characteristics of victims, offenders, reporters, counties and types of maltreatment--are non-trivial. For African Americans they are higher in the state as a whole than in the counties that have the largest share of minority children. Although the discrimination measures do not vanish when disaggregaed analysis is performed, our findings suggest that caution should be displayed when reporting disproportionality statistics that include data from widely dispersed geographical areas.

The Effects of Sample Selection Bias on Racial Differences in Child Abuse Reporting

OBJECTIVE The aim was to examine whether design features of Wave 1, 1980 National Incidence Study (NIS) data resulted in sample selection bias when certain victims of maltreatment were excluded. METHOD Logistic regression models for the probability of child abuse reports to the child protective services (CPS) were estimated using maximum likelihood methods for Black (n = 511) and White (n = 2499) child abuse cases. The models were estimated with and without correction for selection bias using a two-step procedure proposed by Heckman. RESULTS Substantial differences were found in the characteristics of Black and White victims by source of report and by type of maltreatment. Also found were sizeable differences within each racial group between sampled agencies and nonsampled agencies. Sample selection bias affected the estimation of both White and Black child abuse reporting rates. In the Black sample, however, the effect of sample selection bias was to reduce the statistical significance of the impacts of reporting agency and physical and sexual abuse on report rates. In the White sample, most significant factors in the basic model remained statistically significant with correction for selection bias. CONCLUSIONS Selection bias was found to be caused by the exclusion of family, friends, and neighbors in the NIS sample design. Such exclusion has the effect of altering the interpretation of the determinants of child abuse reporting among Blacks, but not among Whites. Thus, conclusions about racial differences in child maltreatment must be reached cautiously, given the NIS study design.

Decomposing Black-White Differences in Child Maltreatment

This article examines conflicting visions of the racial composition of the maltreated populations. The National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) data shows Blacks are overrepresented among reported and substantiated abuse and neglect cases, while the National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS) shows no apparent overrepresentation of children of color. To understand the conflicting evidence, the authors produce from NIS approximate measures of maltreatment rates in NCANDS. Maltreatment rates is broken down into allegation, report and substantiation components. Without disaggregating the data by welfare status, all or most of the racial gap in official maltreatment is found to arise from racial differences in allegations. Disaggregation changes the results. Among welfare cases, on average, half of the Black-White gap in maltreatment is due to racial differences in substantiation. Among nonwelfare cases, about half of the racial gap in official maltreatment is due to racial differences in allegations.

Who benefits from minority business set-asides? The case of New Jersey

Race-based remedies often are justified by evidence of prior discrimination. They work when they benefit groups previously disadvantaged. This article examines one such remedy-minority business set-asides-and its application in the award of public procurement and construction contracts by the state of New Jersey. Analyzed are contract awards to minority and non-minority|non-women-owned business enterprises in 1990, as well as in periods before, during, and after the imposition of a state minority set-aside program. Using a conventional decomposition approach, the article reveals significant discriminatory gaps in the success of minority- versus non-minority-owned firms in obtaining contracts from the state of New Jersey. The analysis suggests that minority contracting success rates fell from the pre-set-aside era to the set-aside era and that discriminatory outcomes persisted. The particular remedy chosen-while justified based on evidence of prior discrimination-appears not to have reduced the original discrimination nor did it unambiguously benefit minority businesses.

The effects of Ph.D. supply on minority faculty representation

The conventional wisdom is that African-Americans, Hispanics, and American Indians are underrepresented among faculty in postsecondary institutions because they are underrepresented among Ph.D. recipients. Thus, the putative solution to the problem of minority faculty underrepresentation is to increase the supply of minority Ph.D.’s. In our book, Faculty of Color in Academe: Bittersweet Success (Turner and Myers, 2000) we point out that the supply-side argument has several flaws. In this and a companion paper (Myers and Turner, 2003) we replicate and update the analysis performed in Chapter 7 of our book using more recent census data and a larger sample for 1990. Once again, we demonstrate that an autonomous increase in the Ph.D. supply, uniform across all groups, would leave the representation of African-American and Hispanic faculty largely unchanged. This conclusion challenges the view that the underrepresentation of minority faculty is solely a supply-side phenomenon that can be addressed primarily by increasing the pipeline for new minority Ph.D.’s. Although a strong case can be made for increasing the minority pipeline, the pipeline itself does not appear to be the central cause of the continued underrepresentation of minority faculty. I. The Problem: At every point in the educational pipeline from the Bachelor’s degree to the doctoral degree, African-Americans, Hispanics, and American Indians are substantially underrepresented.

Unemployment and Racial Differences in Imprisonment

Conventional wisdom about the criminal justice system suggests that extralegal factors such as race or employment status should not affect sentencing outcomes. In this paper we examine an alternative model of the relationship between imprisonment and unemployment and race. The model suggests that penal practices are shaped by the labor market conditions of a system of production and that prisons, as part of a larger set of institutions providing support for economically-dependent populations, help to regulate the most superfluous group of workers in the industrial economy of the Northern states of the United States—unemployed black workers who comprise a large fraction of the pool of “reserve” workers necessary for price stability and economic expansion. We find support for the structural model that links black imprisonment (and Northern imprisonment in general) to manufacturing output and black unemployment.

Racial Earnings Disparities and Family Structure

One explanation for the widening of racial earnings gaps among family heads during the 1980s is that black families were increasingly headed by females during that period. This explanation is tested using data on black and white family heads in 1976 and 1985 from the Institute for Research on Poverty’s Current Population Survey. Log-earnings equations, corrected for selection bias and for the endogeneity of labor force participation, are estimated for blacks and whites in 1976 and 1985. If the impact of rising female-family headship on labor force participation is ignored, one finds support for the family structure explanation. But support for alternative explanations is also found. There are substantial impacts of within-race gender discrimination and of market racial discrimination. When the endogeneity of family structure is taken into account, further support is found for the view that endowment differences only explain a modest portion of the rising gap in earnings between black and white family heads.

Statistical Tests of Discrimination in Punishment

A method, adopted from the labor econometrics literature, is proposed for detecting discrimination in punishment. The method requires the separate estimation of time served and punishment probability equations for, say, whites and blacks. The coefficients from the white equation are used to predict the punishment blacks would receive if treated like whites. A test of no discrimination against blacks is a test that the black punishment predicted by the black equation is equal to the punishment predicted by the equation using the white coefficients but the black “endowments” or characteristics. A further test is proposed that evaluates the economic “efficiency” of disparities in punishment. The test is restricted to measuring the recidivism effect of equality of treatment in punishment. The discrimination test and the efficiency test are illustrated using the U.S. Board of Parole data for 1972. Statistically significant racial disparities in punishment are uncovered and are found to be economically inefficient.

The Color of Money: Bad Credit, Wealth, and Race

This article examines the myth of bad credit in the Black community. Historically, Blacks have had higher savings rates and lower use of credit than Whites. Discrimination in lending led to an aversion to credit. Later, Blacks believed their credit to be bad, even among many better qualified Black loan applicants. The authors find that there is no statistically significant difference in the average level of “bad credit” among Blacks and Whites who have been turned down for loans or who have not applied for loans, as seen in national data sets measuring wealth and expenditures. Contrary to conventional wisdom, no statistically significant difference exists in bad credit rates between Black and White households at the lowest and highest wealth levels. The authors contend that the observed differences in the bad credit rates between Blacks and Whites in the middle wealth range are attributable to different treatment of Blacks and Whites in credit markets.

Crime in Urban Areas: New Evidence and Results

Crime supply functions are reestimated in this paper using data corrected for victim underreporting. It is found in both a mean — variance specification and a conventional crime supply function, which includes measures of the offender’s gains and losses involved in property crimes, that certainty and severity of punishment still deter. When correction for underreporting is made, the effects on the rates of robbery, burglary, larceny, and auto theft of increases in prison admission rates and prison sentence lengths remain negative. This seeming support for the “deterrence hypothesis” must be balanced against the strong evidence that improved legitimate opportunities have a negative effect on crime. Use of improved crime data and a more intuitive economic specification of the offense supply function leads to the conclusion that higher income is a better deterrent to some crimes than increased punishment.