Tag Archives | Causal Effects

Colorism Revisited: The Effects of Skin Color on Educational and Labor Market Outcomes in the United States

Mauricio Bucca

Sociological Science June 10, 2024
10.15195/v11.a19


Studies of colorism—the idea that racial hierarchies coexist with gradational inequalities based on skin color—consistently find that darker skin correlates with lower socioeconomic outcomes. Despite the causal nature of this debate, evidence remains predominantly associational. This study revisits the colorism literature by proposing a causal model underlying these theories. It discusses conditions under which associations may reflect contemporary causal effects of skin color and evaluates strategies for identifying these effects. Using data from the AddHealth and NLSY97 surveys and applying two identification strategies, the study estimates the causal effects of skin color on college degree attainment, personal earnings, and family income among White, Black, and Hispanic populations in the United States. Results show that darker skin correlates with poorer educational and economic outcomes within racial groups. However, evidence of contemporary causal effects of skin color is partial, limited to college attainment of Whites and family income of Hispanics. For Blacks, results suggest a generalized penalty associated with being Black rather than gradation based on skin tone. Methodologically, the article advocates using sensitivity analyses to account for unobserved confounders in models for skin color effects and uses sibling fixed-effects as a secondary complementary strategy.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Mauricio Bucca: Department of Sociology, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. E-mail: mebucca@uc.cl.

Acknowledgements: I wish to thank Fabrizio Bernardi, Kendra Bischoff, Lucas Drouhot, Matias Fernandez, Vida Maralani, Mario Molina, Ben Rosche, Daniela Urbina, Sebastian Urbina, Kim Weeden as well as audiences at the 2021 Population Association of America (PAA) Annual Meeting and the Comparative Life Course and Inequality Research Centre (CLIC) at the European University Institute in Florence for helpful comments and criticisms on earlier versions of the article. I am also grateful for financial support from FONDECYT Iniciación grant project No. 11221171 and ANID Milenio Labor Market Mismatch – Causes and Consequences, LM2C2 (NCS2022045). Direct correspondence to Mauricio Bucca, mebucca@uc.cl

Data: This research uses data from Add Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other fed- eral agencies and foundations. Special acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). No direct support was received from grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis. Access to restricted data through the National Institutes of Health Grant R01HD091125, led by Principal Investigator Kelly Musick.

Supplemental Material

Replication Package: The code necessary for reproducing the data manipulation, modeling, and findings is accessible at https://osf.io/vm647/?view_only=5b6477b89c284a88 9d9e3c77fc6e8fe1.

  • Citation: Bucca, Mauricio. 2024. “Colorism Revisited: The Effects of Skin Color on Educational and Labor Market Outcomes in the United States.” Sociological Science 11: 517-552.
  • Received: February 23, 2024
  • Accepted: March 26, 2024
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Maria Abascal
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a19


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