Estimating the Potential Impact of Combined Race and Ethnicity Reporting on Long-Term Earnings Statistics

Abstract: We use place of birth information from the Social Security Administration linked to earnings data from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics Program and detailed race and ethnicity data from the 2010 Census to study how long-term earnings differentials vary by place of birth for different self-identified race and ethnicity categories. We focus on foreign-born persons from countries that are heavily Hispanic and from countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). We find substantial heterogeneity of long-term earnings differentials within country of birth, some of which will be difficult to detect when the reporting format changes from the current two-question version to the new single-question version because they depend on self-identifications that place the individual in two distinct categories within the single-question format, specifically, Hispanic and White or Black, and MENA and White or Black. We also study the USA-born children of these same immigrants. Long-term earnings differences for the 2nd generation also vary as a function of self-identified ethnicity and race in ways that changing to the single-question format could affect.