Cover: How the Effects of Racial Bias Compound

How the Effects of Racial Bias Compound

by James M. Anderson, Heather Gomez-Bendaña, Rachel Perera, Alyson Youngblood, Maria Gardner, Heather McCracken, Lee Floyd

View Online

Access the tool

RAND researchers illustrate the ways in which small effects of racial bias in educational achievement, income growth, and wealth accumulation can compound over lifetimes. They illustrate the effects of racial bias through the stories of two people who are identical except in terms of their races (one person is Black; the other is White) and use examples from the research to explain the differences in their paths. Users of the tool can adjust the amount of racial bias to see its effects on educational achievement, income growth, and wealth accumulation.

Even ostensibly small amounts of bias in education, income, and wealth can compound to create significant differences in outcomes in these metrics over time. In this tool, researchers modeled education, income, and wealth independently, without showing their interactions for the sake of conceptual simplicity. In reality, differences in education likely will lead to differences in income, which will, in turn, lead to differences in wealth, which can lead to differences in education, income, and wealth for succeeding generations.

Access the tool

Research conducted by

Funding for this research was made possible by the independent research and development provisions of RAND's contracts for the operation of its U.S. Department of Defense federally funded research and development centers. The research was conducted within RAND Project AIR FORCE.

This report is part of the RAND Corporation Tool series. RAND tools may include models, databases, calculators, computer code, GIS mapping tools, practitioner guidelines, web applications, and various toolkits. All RAND tools undergo rigorous peer review to ensure both high data standards and appropriate methodology in keeping with RAND's commitment to quality and objectivity.

Our mission to help improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis is enabled through our core values of quality and objectivity and our unwavering commitment to the highest level of integrity and ethical behavior. To help ensure our research and analysis are rigorous, objective, and nonpartisan, we subject our research publications to a robust and exacting quality-assurance process; avoid both the appearance and reality of financial and other conflicts of interest through staff training, project screening, and a policy of mandatory disclosure; and pursue transparency in our research engagements through our commitment to the open publication of our research findings and recommendations, disclosure of the source of funding of published research, and policies to ensure intellectual independence. For more information, visit www.rand.org/about/research-integrity.

This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited; linking directly to this product page is encouraged. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial purposes. For information on reprint and reuse permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.

The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.