Abstract:
We study whether racial disparities in economic opportunity appear at an early age. Using administrative education data linked to tax records, we study the income-achievement gap across different races and find important variation. The income-achievement gap is small for East Asian children while it is close to twice as large for Indigenous children. Sorting by income into schools accounts for a large portion of the variation in the income-achievement gap across all student groups. In addition, our results suggest that the large income-achievement gap for Indigenous students may be rooted in inequality in health outcomes and poor housing conditions. Our findings on income-achievement gaps across race could partially explain the different intergenerational mobility outcomes by race documented by others.
