The Role of Race and Gender in Topics Surrounding Job Promotions and High School Dropout Likelihood

This dissertation is comprised of three essays. The first essay tests the role of supervisor race and gender on employees' promotion likelihoods using a nationally representative sample of workers from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997. I use a fixed effects model to account for the selection issue of employees and supervisors self-selecting into employment with each other. I find the odds of being promoted are 1.6 times larger for black employees with a white supervisor compared to the odds of being promoted with a black supervisor. The results add to the growing literature on the role of supervisors on labor market outcomes. The second essay studies race and gender differences in the wage returns to promotions and in the role of tenure on promotions using a nationally representative sample of workers from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997. We use a fixed effects model to account for the endogeneity of promotions and find evidence to suggest the wage returns to promotions for black males are significantly smaller compared to white males. Black males earn 44 percent of the wage return that white males earn. Our results hold important implications for the racial-wage gap. Since black males earn, on average, less than white males, the gap in wage returns to promotions creates a larger impact on the absolute returns. The third essay evaluates the role skin tone plays in the likelihood of dropping out of high school for black male respondents in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997. We find that blacks are 11 percent more likely to drop out of high school. This gap almost disappears after controlling for key family background variables. In addition, we find that light skinned blacks are less likely to drop out compared to whites, while dark skinned blacks are more likely to drop out compared to whites after controlling for the same family background variables. Therefore, after controlling for family background, the dropout likelihood of both light and dark skinned blacks "cancel out" and thus the bi-racial gap mistakenly seems to disappear.