The economic cost of not being a white male

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http://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/episode-277-veterans-and-pot-the-case-for-a-robot-president-dolphin-soldiers-and-more-1.3495805/the-other-tax-societal-privilege-and-the-cost-of-being-different-1.3495838

Neuroscientist and big data specialist Vivienne Ming speaks to Laura Lynch about the social 'tax' that comes with being different — in other words, not a straight white male.

By her estimate, women in the U.S. tech industry face a lifetime opportunity cost of up to $300,000, while being a gay man in the U.K. can cost up to $54,000.

Ming — who is herself transgender —  spent three years meticulously calculating the financial opportunity costs of social difference by gathering data from 100 different websites and coding 55,000 variables based on salary, occupation and other factors.

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Vivienne Ming  should also analyze compensation patterns  in the NBA to discern economic cost (both in opportunity and direct compensation costs) to derive the economic cost of not being a Black male.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to get at.  But, in so far as the recent two time league MVP was the  non Black Steve Nash, I think you're going to have to actually show some evidence that black players have an easier time of it in the NBA, if that's the point you are trying to get at.

However, whatever point you are trying to make, it is a distraction from the point brought up in the research that I've posted on.

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http://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/episode-277-veterans-and-pot-the-case-for-a-robot-president-dolphin-soldiers-and-more-1.3495805/the-other-tax-societal-privilege-and-the-cost-of-being-different-1.3495838

Neuroscientist and big data specialist Vivienne Ming speaks to Laura Lynch about the social 'tax' that comes with being different — in other words, not a straight white male.

By her estimate, women in the U.S. tech industry face a lifetime opportunity cost of up to $300,000, while being a gay man in the U.K. can cost up to $54,000.

Ming — who is herself transgender —  spent three years meticulously calculating the financial opportunity costs of social difference by gathering data from 100 different websites and coding 55,000 variables based on salary, occupation and other factors.

Do you or her have any data on the rate of straight white males dying on the job vs non straight white men?  Because for men as a whole it's 11-20 TIMES more than women.  I would guess white dudes and black dudes probably die about the same, but straight men are more likely than non-straights (I'd be willing to entertain arguments the other way).  Yeah, if I'm 15 times more likely to die doing something, I'd like to get paid a little more for it.

Do you work in one of those riskier jobs?  Because otherwise you have no reason to expect to get paid a little more.

Also, how do you know that women haven't applied for those jobs and been turned down for the reasons that Vivienne Ming comments on?

Edit to add:  I note that it's often the case that when people mention percent increases or percent differences but don't give the actual underlying numbers it's because the underlying numbers themselves are very small.  So, if a man has a 0.15% chance of dying on the job and a woman has a 0.01% chance of dying on the job, then I'd agree that men who do the jobs that bring up those percentages should be paid more, but as you said, it should only be 'a little more' in total for all men, and would in no way even begin to account for the overall differences.

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Do you work in one of those riskier jobs?  Because otherwise you have no reason to expect to get paid a little more.

Not the riskiest, but yes, I work around high voltage electricity semi-regularly.  There have been two times working where I was very close to having a bad, potentially fatal accident....that I know about.  It is an all male shop, we've never had a female apply....but it's a unique field.

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I'm sure it happens, but even if it never did, men would still be much more apt to be fishers, garbage collectors, cops, truck drivers, road workers, etc, etc.  Why?  Because men and women are different.

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There still is a wage gap, but it's likely very small once everything is factored in.  It certainly isn't 77% of what a man makes.

This article at the HuffPost is informative.

"Because men and women are different."  

First, a minor point, but I knew a young woman garbage collector who wasn't all that big or strong about ten years ago.  She actually looked a lot like Sarah Polley.

The broader point though, and this is especially with technology today is that the need for brute physical strength for many of those jobs you mentioned is diminishing greatly.  So, if men and women are different, it actually stands to reason that some generic attributes of women would make them better equipped for some aspects of those jobs and the same thing with men with other aspects.  On the surface, there is no inherent reason for a pay gap in most of those jobs, or in most other jobs that used to require a great deal of physical strength but no longer do.

On the article you linked to, first it was written by somebody at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, so I don't dismiss it outright, but I'm suspicious of it.  Secondly, this research came after that article was first written. So, any arguments made in that article should be looked at again in light of this new research.

For instance, the general assumption given on why women earn less than men especially in managerial jobs is that women 'aren't as good at negotiations.'  However, if this research is correct that for say every ten job offers that a white man gets, a white woman gets one, it stands to reason that, in reality it isn't that women aren't as good negotiators as men, but that men have a better hand to negotiate with.

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"I don't care if it's a lady or a dude that's driving it, and I'm sure the shipping companies don't either, but for whatever reason, most of the people at trucker school are dudes."

If you listen to the women who want to be or are truck drivers or construction workers or miners they'll tell you the most difficult part of the job is the sexist behavior of their male counterparts.

For whatever reason, some men seem to be intimidated by working with women.

The attitude of men was well covered in the movie 'North Country', a fictionalized movie based on a true story.  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0395972/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_25

That movie is based on a court case and story from 30 years ago, but anecdotally things are changing slowly.

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I like Charlize Theron as much as the next guy, but anecdotal evidence about one company and a movie does not make a strong argument.

Getting back to dead0man's point, separating out the causes of the gender gap is important because of the effect it has on debate and policy prescriptions. The vast majority of people agree it is unjust for a woman to receive 77% of the wages for the same "work" that a man does. However if the bulk of the gap is due to factors like education/job choices, childcare etc the question is much more complex.

If the difference in wages is largely due to how we organize ourselves as a society, the prescription changes from relatively well supported legislation for equal pay, to the much more difficult and less supported changing society itself. Furthermore, it is questionable in this case how much of these differences are innate to the sexes themselves, or even if societal change is worth pursuing. Is it really a scandal if one chooses the lower paying "mommy track" of their own free will?

I think when you combine the film with what I've heard anecdotally with Vivienne Ming's research you end up with a pretty strong case.

I don't know how you can simply explain away her initial story that a man named Jose sent her an email detailing how when he sent resumes as 'Jose' he received few if any job offers but when he sent the same resume as 'Joe' he received job offers from nearly every firm he sent the offers to.

I agree that the amount of money women earn compared to men is more complicated than adding up the total earnings of all working women and dividing it by the amount of all working women and then doing the same for all working men and then comparing the two, but, as I said above, in light of her findings, I think we need to examine the amount of women who 'chose the mommy track of their own free will' because they discovered that they couldn't get a job in their own chosen field due to discrimination.

Like you, I'm not sure what can be done to address this, but as there is already considerable similar research that confirms her findings, I think the first thing is for white men in positions of power to stop denying that this exists and, further, to stop denying that this is a problem.

This is her original post:
http://moment.vivienneming.com/2015/05/the-tax-on-being-different/

Vivienne Ming herself is actually a businesswoman in the technology industry and not an academic, so this isn't a research paper but is actually a fairly brief  blog comment, however she does provide links to several academic papers that confirm her findings.

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Vivienne Ming  should also analyze compensation patterns  in the NBA to discern economic cost (both in opportunity and direct compensation costs) to derive the economic cost of not being a Black male.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to get at.  But, in so far as the recent two time league MVP was the  non Black Steve Nash, I think you're going to have to actually show some evidence that black players have an easier time of it in the NBA, if that's the point you are trying to get at.

However, whatever point you are trying to make, it is a distraction from the point brought up in the research that I've posted on.

I guess the point I am trying to make is that Vivienne Ming should really consider the fact that compensation are set by market forces which is determined the economic value of the labor produced.  If she believes that being of a certain race gender or sexual orientation leads to lower compensation then she is really saying is the the market is mis-pricing the labor value of these certain demographic categories, in this case in the IT field.  If so the best way Vivienne Ming should react is not to produce such a report but to form a company that will hire these programmers or would be programmers whose labor value are mis-priced in the market which would include women URM and LGBT developers or would be developers .  While such a IT firm would not be another google or yahoo it would be quite profitable given the much lower labor costs it will pay relative to its peers.  I do not know much about Vivienne Ming but she seems quite a capable person and should be able to pull this off.  In fact I think she is a fool for producing this report. If anyone found a certain asset be if financial, or in this case labor value, to be under priced, the first logical reaction should to be scoop up said asset as the below fair market value before anyone else find out about it.  It is quite foolish of her to publish such a survey alerting others to such a possible under-pricing of said labor value.  

Of course if we are talking about IT I do not know why Vivienne Ming is so focused on White Males.  Asian Males are even more over-represented than White Males in the IT industry.  Even if Asian Males are less over-represented in IT upper management roles which are even higher paying (I myself would be an exception here) they are still well over-represented in IT upper management roles relative to their share of the population.  So I do not know why she focus so much no the "cost" of not being a straight White Man and instead talk about the "cost" of not being a straight Asian Man.

I don't worship free markets as much as you obviously do.

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   Steve Nash was mentioned as an example of a non-black player in the NBA who has done well in the league, but I would mention that well he is a non-black person, he most definitely is an African-American, being born in South Africa, but raised in North America (Canada).

That's a stretch.  According to wiki he moved to Canada at the age of 18 months and his family first moved to Regina and then to Victoria, British Columbia.  As Steve Nash is now 42 years old, I can tell you that there weren't many black people in Regina 40 years ago (a lot of Ukrainians though) and that there aren't many black people in Victoria even now.

So, if you are trying to suggest that Steve Nash absorbed African culture living in South Africa, while I don't want to speak for him in any way, I'd suspect that he'd say he doesn't remember living in South Africa and that his 'blackness' had nothing to do with him taking up basketball.  Of course there are quite a number of star white players who had been in the NBA long before Steve Nash, including former U.S Senator for New Jersey and 2000 Democratic Presidential candidate for nomination Bill Bradley.

I realize you may also just be being humorous.

Steve Nash is also a part owner of the Vancouver Whitecaps soccer team who his brother, Martin Nash, used to play for.  (Martin Nash actually retired at the end of the season before Steve Nash bought into the team. Steve Nash was likely brought in to the Whitecaps organization in part because of his celebrity status as the year he bought into the team the Whitecaps were moving up to MLS and in part because he is also a big time soccer fan, but most people expected that Martin Nash would want to play one season in MLS for the Whitecaps and his retirement was something of a surprise.)

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Vivienne Ming  should also analyze compensation patterns  in the NBA to discern economic cost (both in opportunity and direct compensation costs) to derive the economic cost of not being a Black male.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to get at.  But, in so far as the recent two time league MVP was the  non Black Steve Nash, I think you're going to have to actually show some evidence that black players have an easier time of it in the NBA, if that's the point you are trying to get at.

However, whatever point you are trying to make, it is a distraction from the point brought up in the research that I've posted on.

I guess the point I am trying to make is that Vivienne Ming should really consider the fact that compensation are set by market forces which is determined the economic value of the labor produced.  If she believes that being of a certain race gender or sexual orientation leads to lower compensation then she is really saying is the the market is mis-pricing the labor value of these certain demographic categories, in this case in the IT field.  If so the best way Vivienne Ming should react is not to produce such a report but to form a company that will hire these programmers or would be programmers whose labor value are mis-priced in the market which would include women URM and LGBT developers or would be developers .  While such a IT firm would not be another google or yahoo it would be quite profitable given the much lower labor costs it will pay relative to its peers.  I do not know much about Vivienne Ming but she seems quite a capable person and should be able to pull this off.  In fact I think she is a fool for producing this report. If anyone found a certain asset be if financial, or in this case labor value, to be under priced, the first logical reaction should to be scoop up said asset as the below fair market value before anyone else find out about it.  It is quite foolish of her to publish such a survey alerting others to such a possible under-pricing of said labor value.  

Of course if we are talking about IT I do not know why Vivienne Ming is so focused on White Males.  Asian Males are even more over-represented than White Males in the IT industry.  Even if Asian Males are less over-represented in IT upper management roles which are even higher paying (I myself would be an exception here) they are still well over-represented in IT upper management roles relative to their share of the population.  So I do not know why she focus so much no the "cost" of not being a straight White Man and instead talk about the "cost" of not being a straight Asian Man.

I don't worship free markets as much as you obviously do.

Jaichind does have a point. It always strikes me as a little implausible that every ruthless capitalist in this world would be willing to walk away from that much free money just to satisfy their bigotry. I mean, there might be some such people but it would only take one or two evil capitalists prioritizing their own profits instead of their ideological committment to racism or sexism to fix the wage gap, if it was solely about that.

The existence of discrimination has been confirmed by multiple CV studies in many countries. But I would exercise caution in generalizing the impact of that on the macro level.

Milton Friedman made the same argument that Jaichind did.  The problem is is that behavioral economics has largely overturned his ideas since then.

Although I have no doubt that Milton Friedman knew that racism was real, when it came to sexism his view was likely that of 'we know that irrational economic behavior exists, but these irrational acts cancel each other out.'  Since then though, behavioral economics has shown that in many cases where irrational economic behavior exists, most people behave irrationally in the same way.  So, the idea that some employers would discriminate against men, while others would discriminate against women (I'm sure Friedman would never have argued that the discrimination would have been even) and that it would more or less cancel out, has been disproven.

More importantly, the concept of subtle racism or subtle sexism is also now well established.  The idea that hiring managers may not be racist or sexist, but even if they aren't aware of it, they are more likely to hire the type of people like them or that they've grown up with, or gone to university with.

So, Friedman, and by extension Jaichind are simply wrong.

On the final point, a business can engage in racism and sexism for a long time if the costs aren't prohibitive or if nearly every other business they compete with does the same thing.  In a market with perfect competition they probably couldn't do it for long, but most industries aren't perfect competition.  I agree with you and Jaichind that in the long run markets will eliminate this sort of behavior due to competitive forces, but as Keynes said "in the long run, we're all dead."

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I  Lets take IT which is what  Vivienne Ming is talking about.

1.Vivienne Ming already has a full time job.  

2.Vivienne Ming was not just referring to discrimination in IT hiring at all: Ming — who is herself transgender —  spent three years meticulously calculating the financial opportunity costs of social difference by gathering data from 100 different websites and coding 55,000 variables based on salary, occupation and other factors.

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I  Lets take IT which is what  Vivienne Ming is talking about.

1.Vivienne Ming already has a full time job.  

2.Vivienne Ming was not just referring to discrimination in IT hiring at all: Ming — who is herself transgender —  spent three years meticulously calculating the financial opportunity costs of social difference by gathering data from 100 different websites and coding 55,000 variables based on salary, occupation and other factors.

Hmm.  Perhaps I misread it but the link that was provided

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/episode-277-veterans-and-pot-the-case-for-a-robot-president-dolphin-soldiers-and-more-1.3495805/the-other-tax-societal-privilege-and-the-cost-of-being-different-1.3495838

has "By her estimate, women in the U.S. tech industry face a lifetime opportunity cost of up to $300,000, while being a gay man in the U.K. can cost up to $54,000. "

And if you drill into another link within that article

http://qz.com/631455/a-scientist-cacluated-the-cost-of-not-being-a-straight-man-and-she-wants-a-tax-cut/

which has

"When she was chief scientific officer at Gild, a workforce-science company, Ming and her team tried to deconstruct what made a successful programmer, looking for whether his or her code got reused, how other programmers rated it, and other variables. They scraped data from 100 different websites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Bitbucket, taking in 55,000 variables such as what seemed to motivate people (gleaned from social media), what sort of jobs they got, and how much money they made."

So it seems she is just focusing on IT/programmer role where as I mentioned before Asians are way more underrepresented than Whites.  I guess I have to wear my Asian Male Privilege Badge proudly  

Anyway, on the other point.  I get she has a job already.  My view is that whatever research she has done I would view as unproven unless she or some other entity uses her research and proves it out in an IT shop.  Just like that finance professor that keeps on giving lectures on how Gold is undervalued and that we should all buy Gold, unless he or someone using his methodology makes abnormal profits in Gold trading I would view such claims as unproven.  Not necessary wrong as I do view this entire process as very complex system so nothing can be wrong, but unproven.

I believe that was the start of her research, but she broadened it out to more than just IT.

She also did this:
She compiled a database of entrepreneurs, tracing where they were based, how much money they raised, and how many jobs they created. Over the past 10 years, LGBT entrepreneurs created 3 million jobs after they moved from less inclusive places—think Dallas—to more inclusive places, like New York. Ming points out that Republican politicians in the US love to extol the virtues of less regulation and lower taxes; yet these entrepreneurs chose to move to more heavily-taxed places with stricter regulations but better attitudes towards diversity and inclusion.

All hypothesis are unproven until they are tested, but that doesn't mean that all hypothesis are equal. If, as I've written above, you combine her research with other research, some anecdotal, some more so, I think it all combines into a pretty strong case.

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I do not know exactly Friedman's position on this topic so I will stay away from that.      

Milton Friedman wrote about it in his book "Capitalism and Freedom."  It's in his chapter on hiring discrimination.

I have the book and since you might be interested in it I can send it to you if you like.

If you're interested you can send me a private message and I'm sure we could figure something out.  I don't care about the mailing charges or anything.

I have a lot of economics books that I've been trying to give to people who I think might be more interested in them or who might be able to make more use of them than me.  Basic utility theory.

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Vivienne Ming  should also analyze compensation patterns  in the NBA to discern economic cost (both in opportunity and direct compensation costs) to derive the economic cost of not being a Black male.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to get at.  But, in so far as the recent two time league MVP was the  non Black Steve Nash, I think you're going to have to actually show some evidence that black players have an easier time of it in the NBA, if that's the point you are trying to get at.

However, whatever point you are trying to make, it is a distraction from the point brought up in the research that I've posted on.

I guess the point I am trying to make is that Vivienne Ming should really consider the fact that compensation are set by market forces which is determined the economic value of the labor produced.  If she believes that being of a certain race gender or sexual orientation leads to lower compensation then she is really saying is the the market is mis-pricing the labor value of these certain demographic categories, in this case in the IT field.  If so the best way Vivienne Ming should react is not to produce such a report but to form a company that will hire these programmers or would be programmers whose labor value are mis-priced in the market which would include women URM and LGBT developers or would be developers .  While such a IT firm would not be another google or yahoo it would be quite profitable given the much lower labor costs it will pay relative to its peers.  I do not know much about Vivienne Ming but she seems quite a capable person and should be able to pull this off.  In fact I think she is a fool for producing this report. If anyone found a certain asset be if financial, or in this case labor value, to be under priced, the first logical reaction should to be scoop up said asset as the below fair market value before anyone else find out about it.  It is quite foolish of her to publish such a survey alerting others to such a possible under-pricing of said labor value.  

Of course if we are talking about IT I do not know why Vivienne Ming is so focused on White Males.  Asian Males are even more over-represented than White Males in the IT industry.  Even if Asian Males are less over-represented in IT upper management roles which are even higher paying (I myself would be an exception here) they are still well over-represented in IT upper management roles relative to their share of the population.  So I do not know why she focus so much no the "cost" of not being a straight White Man and instead talk about the "cost" of not being a straight Asian Man.

I don't worship free markets as much as you obviously do.

Jaichind does have a point. It always strikes me as a little implausible that every ruthless capitalist in this world would be willing to walk away from that much free money just to satisfy their bigotry. I mean, there might be some such people but it would only take one or two evil capitalists prioritizing their own profits instead of their ideological committment to racism or sexism to fix the wage gap, if it was solely about that.

The existence of discrimination has been confirmed by multiple CV studies in many countries. But I would exercise caution in generalizing the impact of that on the macro level.

Milton Friedman made the same argument that Jaichind did.  The problem is is that behavioral economics has largely overturned his ideas since then.

Although I have no doubt that Milton Friedman knew that racism was real, when it came to sexism his view was likely that of 'we know that irrational economic behavior exists, but these irrational acts cancel each other out.'  Since then though, behavioral economics has shown that in many cases where irrational economic behavior exists, most people behave irrationally in the same way.  So, the idea that some employers would discriminate against men, while others would discriminate against women (I'm sure Friedman would never have argued that the discrimination would have been even) and that it would more or less cancel out, has been disproven.

More importantly, the concept of subtle racism or subtle sexism is also now well established.  The idea that hiring managers may not be racist or sexist, but even if they aren't aware of it, they are more likely to hire the type of people like them or that they've grown up with, or gone to university with.

So, Friedman, and by extension Jaichind are simply wrong.

On the final point, a business can engage in racism and sexism for a long time if the costs aren't prohibitive or if nearly every other business they compete with does the same thing.  In a market with perfect competition they probably couldn't do it for long, but most industries aren't perfect competition.  I agree with you and Jaichind that in the long run markets will eliminate this sort of behavior due to competitive forces, but as Keynes said "in the long run, we're all dead."

I do a lot of behavioral economics but the question here is one of magnitude. I'm not saying there is no discrimination. The question is whether it can be a huge driving force. That would require a lot of market imperfection that seems implausible, especially in a field like IT startups.

To DeadFlag, sure, I think you have a point, but to me that isn't discrimination exactly. Or, rather, I don't think your point is a defense of the position being criticized here which does have to do with manager decisions rather than structural reasons some people perform worse, internalize other norms, etc.

Vivienne Ming did NOT just research ITs.