How You Can Work to Increase the Presence and Improve the Experience of Black, Latinx, and Native American People in the Economics Profession

摘要

The numbers are dismal. Black, Latinx, and Native American people earned just 9.5 percent of economics PhD degrees awarded to US residents in 2017 (National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics 2018). These groups comprise over 30 percent of the population. While the number of Latinx PhD degree earners in economics has increased over recent years, when normalized by their increasing share in the population, the trend is flat. More disheartening, the share of Black economics doctorates has actually fallen since the start of the millennium, while at the same time, the share of Black PhD earners in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics has risen. There are too few Native Americans earning doctorates to calculate meaningful trends (National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics 2018). The experiences of minorities in economics are perhaps even more troubling. Of the Black, Latinx, and Native American respondents to the American Economic Association Climate Survey in winter 2018-19, 28 percent report having personally been discriminated against or treated unfairly on the basis of race/ethnicity by someone in the field of economics. Three-fifths of Black and Latinx women, both students and professionals, report experiencing either racial discrimination or gender discrimination or both. These groups are also the most likely to take costly action, such as leaving ajob, to avoid possible harassment, discrimination, or unfair treatment (Allgood et al. 2019).