Posted on 11/20/2017 11:43:00 PM PST by blam
A trio of labor economists suggest that effort at work is correlated with race…
As The Economist writes, given the long history of making racial slurs about the efforts of some workers, any study casting black and Hispanic men as lazier than whites and Asians is sure to court controversy.
But, a provocative working paper by economists Daniel Hamermesh, Katie Genadek and Michael Burda sticks a tentative toe into these murky waters.
They suggest that America’s well-documented racial wage gap is overstated by 10% because minorities, especially men, spend larger portions of their workdays not actually working.
Uncomfortable though the topic may be, the authors have attempted a rigorous analysis.
The study’s method is straightforward. The data come from nearly 36,000 “daily diaries”, self-reporting on how Americans spent their working hours, collected from 2003 to 2012.
Relying on the assumption that workers are equally honest in admitting sloth, the authors calculate the fraction of time spent not working while on the job – spent relaxing or eating, say – and find that it varies by race to a small but statistically significant degree.
The gap remains, albeit in weaker form, even with the addition of extensive controls for geography, industry and union status, among others. Non-white male workers spend an additional 1.1% of the day not working while on the job, or an extra five minutes per day.
Assuming their controls are adequate, that would still leave 90% of the wage difference between white workers and ethnic minorities, which was recently estimated to be 14%, unexplained.
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at newzsentinel.com ...
That would be a union shop.
Spatial relationships are one facet of IQ. Mathematics is quite different as is verbal testing. Some people do well in one area and not another.
Except that the spatial recognition test is a better predictor of success in STEM fields which involve a lot of math than is the direct math testing OR overall IQ.
I’m not sure I believe that. What evidence is there? IQ remains the gold standard based on decades of proof and outcomes.
The evidence is the published research of the psychometricians (who also provided the evidence for IQ that you are quoting). IQ certainly has a far longer track record, but that proves nothing. But this isn't my area of science, so I don't know the full extent of their basis.
Self reporting is bogus.
For example, I had to do employee evaluations for my last employer. The company had installed monitoring software on all of the computers that recorded keystrokes and screen captures.
I was instructed to use that information to monitor how much someone was “working”. All I could do was monitor when they were not working on their computer - messaging their spouse, updating their Facebook page, playing online games, etc. - this did not include non-computer related goofing off like extended breaks, talking to co-workers, etc.
As part of their monthly reviews (yes, the company was that anal that they formally reviewed job performance with the employee monthly) they would be asked to give an estimate of their percentage of “productive” time at work. No one EVER said less than 90% productive and nearly all of the employees we in the 75-80% productive range.
You can attribute it to dishonesty or possibly just a lack of self-awareness, but either way, self reporting productivity is a joke.
A single publication versus hundreds just doesn’t get it with me. I am a bio scientist, and trust me, there is a lot of misinformation that gets published. The long track record with experiments replicated in multiple labs is what establishes the truth that withstands the test of time. I have seen too many publications retracted and withdrawn. I’ve also been on selection committees that select who is qualified to enter the professional school and who is not. Admittedly, most of this committee work was back in the day when students gained entrance based on merit and not race and gender where applicants have found a new way to cheat by excluding the more qualified applicant.
You misunderstand. The article I am referring to was a review article, summarizing the results of many studies, not just a single paper advancing a new hypothesis. Since I read this some years back, more research has likely been done adding to the subject.
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