A new study from the Inter-American Devel­op­ment Bank exam­ines wage gaps between eth­nic groups and gen­ders. The bank says that the study’s find­ings sug­gest that edu­ca­tion must improve for eth­nic minori­ties in Latin Amer­ica.

From Star­boek News, we read more results from the study.

Accord­ing to the find­ings, Afro-descendants and indige­nous peo­ple earn 28 per cent less than their white peers; males earn 17 per cent more than females when both have the same age and level of edu­ca­tion; and edu­ca­tion is key to reduc­ing eth­nic wage inequal­i­ties in the region.

In an unprece­dented analy­sis of house­hold data from 18 nations in Latin Amer­ica, the study found that women and eth­nic minori­ties are clearly at a dis­ad­van­tage, an IDB news release said.

Females earn less

Females in the region earn less than their male coun­ter­parts even though they are more edu­cated. A sim­ple com­par­i­son of aver­age wages indi­cates that men earn 10 per cent more than women. But once econ­o­mists com­pare males and females with the same age and level of edu­ca­tion, the wage gap between men and women is 17 per cent.

For seven coun­tries where eth­nic data is avail­able, the study found that indige­nous and Afro-descendant minori­ties earn on aver­age 28 per cent less than the white pop­u­la­tion in the region, when indi­vid­u­als have the same age, gen­der and level of edu­ca­tion. It con­sid­ered “minori­ties” peo­ple who declared them­selves in house­hold sur­veys as indige­nous, black or brown, or speak­ers of an indige­nous lan­guage. Despite being the major­ity in some coun­tries of the study, these groups are con­sid­ered “minorities”.

The paper pro­vides evi­dence that the region still faces major chal­lenges in erad­i­cat­ing dis­ad­van­tages in labour mar­kets based on char­ac­ter­is­tics like gen­der or ethnicity.

“Polices aimed at reduc­ing these inequal­i­ties are still lack­ing. This is more than just a moral neces­sity. It is an essen­tial strat­egy to reduce poverty in the region,” said IDB econ­o­mist Hugo Ñopo, the lead author of the study.

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