Open Access Journal Article

Can Education Reduce or Mitigate Discrimination? An Investigation on Earnings of PhD Recipients in the US

by Wei-Chiao Huang a,* ,  Qing Zang b  and  Daxue Kan c
a
Department of Economics, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI 49008, USA
b
Bank OZK, USA
c
Nanchang Institute of Technology, China
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
EAL  2024, 57; 3(2), 57; https://doi.org/10.58567/eal03020006
Received: 29 October 2023 / Accepted: 8 February 2024 / Published Online: 15 June 2024
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Abstract

Spence’s signaling model (Spence, 1973) suggests that education can signal workers’ unobserved ability to employers thereby mitigating discrimination. There have been several studies concerning education’s impact on labor market discrimination against minority or disadvantaged groups. Our approach in this inquiry is unique in that we utilize the data of PhD recipients, a group of people with the highest education attainment, to test Spence’s theory. Another novelty of this paper is that in addition to examining possible discrimination against women and foreign-born, as has been done in previous studies, we further explore possible discrimination against the physically challenged individuals. Our baseline results show conflicting results that Ph.D. education can reduce discrimination against disability and foreign-born but not against gender. Further analysis by the Blinder-Oaxaca Decomposition shows that the wage gaps of gender and disability come more from the unobserved part than the explained part, while the foreign-born wage gap come more from the observable human capital differences. Since prejudice is an unobserved factor and we know that the disadvantaged groups are likely to suffer from prejudice (Oaxaca, 1973; Blinder, 1973; Montes-Rojas et al., 2017; Deshpande and Khanna, 2018), we conjecture that prejudice might be attributable to the unexplained part of the wage gaps. Furthermore, prejudice might be deeply rooted in one’s mind, thus difficult to remove even with the influence of education. Hence, our results reveal that it would be hard for Ph.D. education to eradicate the discrimination against gender and disability, but not against foreign-born.

Keywords: Education; Discrimination; Doctorate recipients; Blinder-Oaxaca Decompositions;
Copyright: © 2024 by Huang, Zang and Kan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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ACS Style
Huang, W.; Zang, Q.; Kan, D. Can Education Reduce or Mitigate Discrimination? An Investigation on Earnings of PhD Recipients in the US. Economic Analysis Letters, 2024, 3, 57. https://doi.org/10.58567/eal03020006
AMA Style
Huang W, Zang Q, Kan D. Can Education Reduce or Mitigate Discrimination? An Investigation on Earnings of PhD Recipients in the US. Economic Analysis Letters; 2024, 3(2):57. https://doi.org/10.58567/eal03020006
Chicago/Turabian Style
Huang, Wei-Chiao; Zang, Qing; Kan, Daxue 2024. "Can Education Reduce or Mitigate Discrimination? An Investigation on Earnings of PhD Recipients in the US" Economic Analysis Letters 3, no.2:57. https://doi.org/10.58567/eal03020006
APA style
Huang, W., Zang, Q., & Kan, D. (2024). Can Education Reduce or Mitigate Discrimination? An Investigation on Earnings of PhD Recipients in the US. Economic Analysis Letters, 3(2), 57. https://doi.org/10.58567/eal03020006

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