Walter E. Williams

Male-Female Earnings Differentials: A Critical Reappraisal

In the May 1978 issue of The Canadian Journal of Economics, Roberta Robb attributed between 58.9 per cent (standardized for occupation and industry) and 75.4 per cent (not standardized) of the male-female Ontario earnings differential in 1971 to sexual discrimination. We should like to point out several flaws in the analysis.

A Tragic Vision of Black Problems

RACIAL DISCRIMINATION WAS AN UGLY PART OF U.S. HISTORY. IT USED TO be a reasonably satisfactory explanation for the socioeconomic status of black Americans. Today, that has changed. For all intents and purposes, the civil rights struggle is over and is won; black Americans now have constitutional guarantees just like other Americans. The fact that civil rights is no longer the issue it once was does not mean that every vestige of racial discrimination has been eliminated. Neither should it suggest that residual discrimination has no explanatory value. It simply means that racial discrimination is not the problem for blacks it once was. Victory on the civil rights front does not mean there are not major problems confronting a large segment of the black community. It does mean that those problems are not civil rights problems and that their solutions will not be achieved through civil rights strategies. Those problems and their trends are well known. Female-headed households increased from 18 percent of the black population in 1950 to well over 50 percent by 1990.1 As of 1990, only 38 percent of black children lived in two-parent families, compared to 79 percent for whites.2 Coupled with this dramatic family breakdown has been an astonishing growth in the rate of illegitimacy. Black illegitimacy in 1940 was 19 percent; by 1965, it had grown to 28 percent. After Patrick Moynihans 1965 report warning of the dire consequences of black family breakdown, black illegitimacy skyrocketed, reaching 49 percent in 1975, and, in 1995, it stands close to 70 percent. If present trends continue, black illegitimacy will be 75 percent by

A False Vision of Black Problems

“Heirs of the Wizard” is a rather shallow attempt to dismiss the contributions of Walter E. Williams, Thomas Sowell, and Shelby Steele to issues surrounding race. Clarence E. Walkers misunderstanding of issues discussed by Sowell and Williams is captured by his phrase “practices that raise questions about Williamss faith in the market.” Speaking for myself, and probably Sowell, it is not a faith in the market as much as evidence about the market upon which we rely.

South Africa's War against Capitalism

The evolution of apartheid the South African legal structure the drive for racial labour laws market manipulation to support apartheid apartheid - rhetoric versus reality apartheid - a triumph over capitalism postcript for South Africans.

South Africa's Victory Against Capitalism

The South African economy is widely misrepresented, not least by the Western media, as being an oppressive capitalist regime. Walter Williams, Professor of Economics at George Mason University, Virginia, demonstrates how South Africas economy has been socialist for many decades. What South Africa requires is less socialism, not more.