Are within-racial group inequalities by skin color really greater than inequalities between racial groups in the United States?

Mauricio Bucca.

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between skin color and educational and labor market outcomes within White, Black, and Hispanic populations in the U.S. By analyzing NLSY97 data, it challenges claims that intra-racial inequalities based on skin color match or surpass inequalities between ethnoracial groups. The findings indicate that, although a darker skin tone correlates with less favorable outcomes across all ethnoracial groups, disparities along the color continuum within the Black population are less pronounced than those between Blacks and Whites as a whole. For Hispanics, the significance of between- and within-race inequality varies depending on the outcome. These insights remain consistent both in descriptive analysis and after adjusting for socioeconomic origins.