Race and the Income-Achievement Gap

Ryan Bacic () and Angela Zheng ()
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Ryan Bacic: McMaster University
Angela Zheng: McMaster University

No 16419, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: A large literature documents a positive correlation between parental income and child test scores. In this paper, we study whether this relationship, the dependence of the cognitive skills of children on the socioeconomic resources of their parents, varies across race. Using education data linked to tax records, we find that the income-achievement gap is small for East Asian children while significantly larger for Indigenous children. School-level factors explains a large portion of the variation in the gap across race. Our results suggest that the large income-achievement gap for Indigenous students may be rooted in inequality in special needs status.

Keywords: income-achievement gaps; test scores; race (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 I24 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2023-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-lab and nep-ure
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Published - pubished in: Economic Inquiry, 2024, 62 (1), 5- 23

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