Hamermesh, Genadek, and Burda (HGB) ( ILR Review 2021) found that Black and non-Black Hispanic workers spent more time at work, not working, compared to Whites. They argued that observed racial gaps in earnings might be explained by racial disparities in time at work and not working. Darity, Hamilton, Myers, Price, and Xu (DHMPX) ( ILR Review 2021), noting the sensitivity of these results to structural form, responded and argued that Oaxaca decompositions reveal no sizeable racial differences in time at work not working. Hamermesh, Genadek, and Burda’s response (HGB-II) ( ILR Review 2022) claimed that the techniques used by DHMPX are outdated. This rejoinder provides a robust defense of the decomposition techniques applied in DHMPX but also includes new Gelbach decompositions using individual microdata. Estimates in this article confirm that time use choices do not explain the observed racial earnings gap.
Darity et al. (Sun,) studied this question.