Is Parental Love Colorblind? Human Capital Accumulation within Mixed Families

Posted in Articles, Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, Economics, Family/Parenting, Media Archive, Social Science on 2014-11-19 17:32Z by Steven

Is Parental Love Colorblind? Human Capital Accumulation within Mixed Families

The Review of Black Political Economy
2014-07-04
DOI: 10.1007/s12114-014-9190-1

Marcos A. Rangel, Assistant Professor
Sanford School of Public Policy
Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

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.

Read or purchase the article here.

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Is Parental Love Colorblind? Allocation of Resources within Mixed-Race Families (Preliminary Version)

Posted in Brazil, Family/Parenting, Media Archive, Papers/Presentations, Social Science on 2009-11-12 02:31Z by Steven

Is Parental Love Colorblind? Allocation of Resources within Mixed-Race Families (Preliminary Version)

Prepared for the Labor and Population Workshop,
Department of Economics, Yale University
May, 2007
53 pages

Marcos A. Rangel, Assistant Professor
Harris School of Public Policy Studies
University of Chicago

Recent studies have shown that differences in wage-determinant skills between blacks and whites are likely to emerge during a child’s infancy. These findings highlight the role of parental investment decisions and suggest that differences in labor income tend to persist across generations, either because minority parents are limited in their choices, or because they have relatively negative expectations regarding the rewards attached to investments in skills. Exploring the genetics of skin-color determination and the widespread incidence of mixed-race families in Brazil, 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. Even though not denying the importance of borrowing constraints (or other ancestry effects), this suggests that parental expectations regarding differences in the return to human capital investments may play an independent role on the persistence of earnings differentials.

Read the entire working paper here or here.

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