{"id":37863,"date":"2011-08-13T10:17:41","date_gmt":"2011-08-13T15:17:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=37863"},"modified":"2013-11-09T06:15:46","modified_gmt":"2013-11-09T11:15:46","slug":"why-variance-matters-race-education-and-income","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/08\/13\/why-variance-matters-race-education-and-income\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Variance Matters: Race, Education, and Income"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Kelsey C. sent in a some great data from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bls.gov\/opub\/ted\/2011\/ted_20110721.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Bureau of Labor Statistics<\/a> that helps illustrate why variance matters as much as a measure of the average. \u00a0The figure shows the median income by race and education level, as well as the typical earnings of each group&#8217;s members in the third quartile (or the 75th percentile) and first quartile (or the 25th percentile). \u00a0What you see is that the median earnings across these groups is different, but also that the amount of inequality within each group isn&#8217;t consistent. \u00a0That is, some groups have a wider range of income than others:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/07\/14.png\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-37865\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/07\/14.png\" width=\"580\" height=\"536\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/07\/14.png 580w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/07\/14-500x462.png 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 580px) 100vw, 580px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>So, Asians are the most economically advantaged of all groups included, but they also have the widest range of income. \u00a0This means that some Asians do extremely well, better than many whites, but many Asians are really struggling. \u00a0In comparison, among Blacks and Hispanics, the range is smaller. \u00a0So the highest earning Blacks and Hispanics don&#8217;t do as well relative to the groups median as do Whites and Asians.<\/p>\n<p>Likewise, dropping out of high school seems to put a cap on how much you can earn; as education increases it raises the floor, but it also raises the variance in income. This means that someone with a bachelors degree doesn&#8217;t necessarily make craploads of money, but they might.<\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/\">Lisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/American-Hookup-New-Culture-Campus\/dp\/039328509X?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">American Hookup<\/a><em>, a book about college sexual culture; a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Gender-Interactions-Institutions-Lisa-Wade\/dp\/0393931072?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/intro\/\">Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a><em>.\u00a0You can follow her on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/lisawade\">Twitter<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/lisawadephd\/\">Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kelsey C. sent in a some great data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that helps illustrate why variance matters as much as a measure of the average. \u00a0The figure shows the median income by race and education level, as well as the typical earnings of each group&#8217;s members in the third quartile (or the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,34,274,285,1759,1760,1754,1757],"class_list":["post-37863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-education","tag-methodsuse-of-data","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-asianspacific-islanders","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans","tag-raceethnicity-latinos","tag-raceethnicity-whiteseuropeans"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37863"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58739,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37863\/revisions\/58739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}