The Double Gap: Quantifying Black Women's Systemic Wage Undervaluation and its Impact on the Community

Michelle Holder, an Assistant Professor of Economics, introduces and elaborates on the concept of the "double gap" in wages, specifically affecting Black women in the United States. This term reflects the unique challenge Black women face in the labor market, experiencing wage penalties based on both their gender and their race. Holder emphasizes that this combined effect results in a wage gap larger than either the gender wage gap or the racial wage gap alone, and it's not simply an additive relationship but a more complex, magnified penalty. She highlights that despite a long and deep history as workers, Black women's labor has been consistently undervalued and inadequately compensated, challenging mainstream economic theories like human capital theory which fail to explain why equally qualified and educated Black women earn less than white men in similar positions.

A significant aspect of Holder's research is its critique of the pervasive and false narrative of the "lazy woman of color" often associated with welfare reform debates. She asserts that Black women have historically maintained a higher labor force participation rate than white women, demonstrating an incredibly loyal and hardworking demographic. Her work shifts the discourse from an individualistic examination of wage gaps to a broader analysis of their impact on the entire Black community. Holder's methodology, which includes collaboration with researchers like Tom Masterson and utilizes robust datasets like the American Community Survey, aims to quantify this collective loss.

Through her research, Holder quantifies the "involuntary forfeiture" of wages borne by Black women due to the double gap. She carefully defines this as money Black women should be entitled to but do not receive, rather than outright "robbery," acknowledging the voluntary acceptance of wages while highlighting the systemic undervaluation. Her study, restricted to the private for-profit sector, found that this recurring loss amounted to an astonishing $50 billion per year in 2017 to the African-American community. This substantial figure underscores the profound economic drain caused by systemic wage discrimination.

The analysis also identifies specific occupational categories where this gap is particularly pronounced, including legal, management, engineering, and architecture (STEM-related fields). While Holder's research doesn't definitively identify who benefits from this undervaluation, she hypothesizes potential beneficiaries could include shareholders of private corporations, other workers, or even consumers through lower costs. Crucially, she concludes that regardless of who benefits, it is unequivocally not the Black community, emphasizing the need for policy interventions and a deeper understanding of how structural inequalities manifest in economic outcomes.

the double gap means that black women in the united states are in a labor market where they face wage penalties based on both their gender and their race

the wage penalties that black women face are larger than either just the racial wage gap or just the gender wage gap

neoclassical economic theory however falls short in explaining the double gap that black women face because if you look at equally qualified equally educated white men and black women in the american labor market there is in almost every instance in major occupational categories a difference in compensation

african-american women have been an incredibly loyal demographic in the american workforce meaning that their labor force participation rate... has consistently and historically been higher than that of of white women

the image of the lazy woman of color you know sort of pumping out children to get federal assistance right to get welfare assistance that narrative was so effectively used when in fact that narrative is completely and utterly false

almost without exception... equally qualified equally skilled equally educated black women in american society can fully expect at some point in their careers to be undervalued and underpaid

I wanted to look at it in terms of what is lost to the black community in the united states as a result of black women being almost universally undervalued no matter where she works in the united states

I essentially quantified the involuntary forfeiture of wages borne by black women given gender and racial wage gaps at 50 billion dollars a year

50 billion dollars per year is what is lost to the african-american community and this is re a reoccurring loss this is a lost every year given the double gap

I don't know who benefits but what I what I can say I know is that it is not benefiting the black community