Authors: Aaron Colston, William “Sandy” Darity Jr., Raffi E. García, Lauren Russell, and Jorge Zumaeta
This research is funded by the Ford Foundation
Abstract: We use novel face-to-face survey data where interviewers use standardized scales to rate respondents’ physical attractiveness and skin tone in addition to collecting detailed information on financial and health outcomes. We go further than similar studies that estimate racial gaps in socio-economic outcomes by studying racial-ethnic groups (i.e. U.S. blacks, African blacks, Mexicans, Koreans, and Cambodians) as opposed to only racial groups (i.e. blacks, Hispanics, and Asians). Our findings show that across African American, Vietnamese, Korean and Cambodian participants, lighter skin tone correlates with more favorable economic and social outcomes. The opposite pattern is found within the Mexican community in which darker-skinned Mexicans appear to have higher earnings than their lighter-skinned counterparts. This appears to contradict what has been observed about preferences for lighter skin in both the U.S. and Latin America. However, it could be explained based on the immigration patterns of dark-skinned Mexican immigrants who first settled in the Los Angeles area.
Key Findings
- Descriptive analyses on skin complexion rating show the face-to-face sample is skewed towards lighter skin tones, skin tones with rates of 3 and 4 account for 43 percent of the observations. We find that skin tone and wealth correlation to be positive only for Other Hispanics and Korean, and it is insignificant for all other groups. The correlation between skin tone and earnings is negative and only significant when accounting for the entire sample. Within group correlation between earnings and skin tone is not statistically significant.
- OLS results show that the significance for skin tone disappears when controlling for racial-ethnic groups. However, it shows significance when interviewer fix effects are added in the regression – which means unobservables at the interviewer (a proxy employer) level influences the relationship between earnings and skin tone.
- Regression results indicate that darker skin colors are associated with lower earnings for whites and African Americans, while that was not necessarily the case for Hispanics or Asians.
