Explaining racial disparities in access to employment benefits

Abstract

This research examines disparities in access to pension and health insurance plans between white, blacks, Latino and Asian workers in the American labour force. Using data from the 2006 March Supplement of the Current Population Survey, the analysis reveals that Latino workers are the most disadvantaged and white workers are the most advantaged. The entire gap in likelihood of receiving benefits between whites and Asians, and a substantial portion of the gap between whites and blacks, can be accounted for by socio-demographic and employment-related variables, but only a small portion of the gap between whites and Latinos can be attributed to such variables. The findings suggest that reliance on earnings for estimation of inequality underestimates the economic gap between racial groups. Explanations for disparities in access to employment benefits are offered and the relevance of the findings to other societies is discussed.

Keywords:

• Inequality
• labour market
• American society
• pension
• health insurance

Acknowledgements

An early version of this paper was presented at the Southwest Council for Latin American Studies meeting in March 2009, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. The authors wish to thank Anya Glikman and Assaf Rotman for assistance in preparation and analysis of the data. Work on this paper was partly supported by grant 842/06 awarded by the Israel Science Foundation.

Notes

1. One consequence of our decision to treat Latinos as a racial group is that the analysis of sub-groups within this larger category becomes theoretically problematic. For example, Mexicans and other Central Americans differ on some aspects of culture and identity, but describing them as members of different races stretches the definition of the concept ‘race’ beyond the breaking point.

2. Since health insurance can include family members, it is possible that selectivity of men and women as well as of individuals of different ethnicity and background.characteristics into employment can be affected by access of the spouse to health insurance.

3. It is important to note that within the Latino population there are differences based on country of origin but these differences are beyond the scope of our present study. The detailed figures are available from the authors upon request.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Moshe Semyonov

MOSHE SEMYONOV is Bernard and Audre Rapoport Professor of the Sociology of Labor at Tel Aviv University and Professor of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Noah Lewin-Epstein

NOAH LEWIN-EPSTEIN is Professor of Sociology and Dean of the Gordon Faculty of Social Sciences at Tel Aviv University.

William P. Bridges

WILLIAM P. BRIDGES is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Office of Social Science Research at the University of Illinois at Chicago.