William A. Darity Jr. (born April 19, 1953)
is an American
economist
An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics.
The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...
and social sciences researcher. Darity's research spans economic history, development economics, economic psychology, and the history of economic thought, but most of his research is devoted to group-based inequality, especially with respect to race and ethnicity. His 2005 paper in the Journal of Economics and Finance established Darity as the 'founder o
stratification economics' His varied research interests have also included the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, African American reparations and the economics of
black reparations, and social and economic policies that affect inequities by race and ethnicity.
For the latter, he has been described as "perhaps the country’s leading scholar on the economics of racial inequality."
He is currently the Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics at
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...
; he is also the director of th
Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University Previously he was the Cary C. Boshamer Professor of Economics and Sociology at the
University of North Carolina
The University of North Carolina is the multi-campus public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the NC School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referred to as the UNC Sy ...
.
Darity was a visiting scholar at the
Federal Reserve
The Federal Reserve System (often shortened to the Federal Reserve, or simply the Fed) is the central banking system of the United States of America. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, after a ...
's Board of Governors in 1984, and a fellow at the
National Humanities Center The National Humanities Center (NHC) is an independent institute for advanced study in the humanities. The NHC operates as a privately incorporated nonprofit and is not part of any university or federal agency. The center was planned under the auspi ...
(1989-1990), a Visiting Fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (2011-2012), and a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Russell Sage Foundation. For the 2022-2023 academic year, he is the Katherine Hampson Bessett Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute. He is also a former president of the National Economic Association (1986), the
Southern Economic Association The Southern Economic Association (SEA) is a regional-based scholarly economic
An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that e ...
(1996),
and the Association of Black Sociologists (2015-2017).
Early life, education
William A. "Sandy" Darity Jr. was born in Norfolk, Virginia
and spent time in his childhood in
Beirut, Lebanon;
Alexandria, Egypt
Alexandria ( or ; ar, ٱلْإِسْكَنْدَرِيَّةُ ; grc-gre, Αλεξάνδρεια, Alexándria) is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in by Alexander the Great, Alexandria ...
; and
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Chapel Hill is a town in Orange, Durham and Chatham counties in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Its population was 61,960 in the 2020 census, making Chapel Hill the 17th-largest municipality in the state. Chapel Hill, Durham, and the state ca ...
. His adolescent years were spent primarily in
Amherst, Massachusetts
Amherst () is a New England town, town in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Connecticut River valley. As of the 2020 census, the population was 39,263, making it the highest populated municipality in Hampshire County (althoug ...
. His parents were William A. Darity Sr., a long-time faculty member and the founding Dean of the School of Public Health at the
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, it ...
, and his mother, Evangeline Royal Darity, was a faculty member and administrator at
Smith College
Smith College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smith (Smith College ...
and
Mt. Holyoke College
Mount Holyoke College is a Private college, private liberal arts college, liberal arts Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in South Hadley, Massachusetts. It is the oldest member of the historic Seven Sisters (colleges), Seve ...
. He has one sibling, Janiki Evangelia Darity, who works as an attorney.
Darity Jr. graduated
magna cum laude
Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some So ...
with a bachelor's degree from
Brown University
Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...
in 1974, where he earned honors in
economics
Economics () is the social science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services.
Economics focuses on the behaviour and intera ...
and
political science
Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...
.
He was named a
Marshall Scholar
The Marshall Scholarship is a postgraduate scholarship for "intellectually distinguished young Americans ndtheir country's future leaders" to study at any university in the United Kingdom. It is widely considered one of the most prestigious sc ...
after undergraduate school,
and on the scholarship spent one year studying at the
.
In 1978 he completed a
doctorate
A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''l ...
in economics at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
.
Academic career
In 1980, Dr. Darity became a staff economist in the research department of the
National Urban League
The National Urban League, formerly known as the National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes, is a nonpartisan historic civil rights organization based in New York City that advocates on behalf of economic and social justice for African Am ...
.
He began a long period as a professor at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States ...
in 1983.
He was then a visiting scholar at the
Federal Reserve
The Federal Reserve System (often shortened to the Federal Reserve, or simply the Fed) is the central banking system of the United States of America. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, after a ...
's
Board of Governors
A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit organi ...
in 1984.
Darity has served as a director or on the board of a number of organizations. From 1989 to 1990 was a fellow at the
National Humanities Center The National Humanities Center (NHC) is an independent institute for advanced study in the humanities. The NHC operates as a privately incorporated nonprofit and is not part of any university or federal agency. The center was planned under the auspi ...
. He became a member of the
American Economic Association
The American Economic Association (AEA) is a learned society in the field of economics. It publishes several peer-reviewed journals acknowledged in business and academia. There are some 23,000 members.
History and Constitution
The AEA was esta ...
's executive committee from 1993 to 1996, and in 1997 he was President of the
Southern Economic Association The Southern Economic Association (SEA) is a regional-based scholarly economic
An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that e ...
.
He is also a former president of the
National Economic Association
The National Economic Association (NEA) is a learned society established in 1969, focused on initiatives in the field of economics.
The purposes of the Association are "to promote the professional lives of minorities within the profession. In a ...
.
He has served as a professor at
Grinnell College
Grinnell College is a private liberal arts college in Grinnell, Iowa, United States. It was founded in 1846 when a group of New England Congregationalists established the Trustees of Iowa College.
Grinnell has the fifth highest endowment-to-stu ...
, the
University of Maryland at College Park
The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the Flagship un ...
, the
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...
,
Simmons College
Institutions of learning called Simmons College or Simmons University include:
* Simmons University, a women's liberal arts college in Boston, Massachusetts
* Simmons College of Kentucky, a historically black college in Louisville, Kentucky
* Ha ...
in Boston, and
Claremont McKenna College
Claremont McKenna College (CMC) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Claremont, California. It has a curricular emphasis on government, economics, public affairs, finance, and internat ...
.
From 2003 to 2005 he was a William and
Camille Cosby
Camille Olivia Cosby ( Hanks; born March 20, 1944) is an American television producer, philanthropist, and the wife of comedian Bill Cosby. The character of Clair Huxtable from ''The Cosby Show'' was based on her. Cosby has avoided public life, b ...
Endowed Professor at
Spelman College
Spelman College is a private, historically black, women's liberal arts college in Atlanta, Georgia. It is part of the Atlanta University Center academic consortium in Atlanta. Founded in 1881 as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary, Spelman re ...
.
He has also either taught or served as a fellow at London School of Economics and Political Science, the
University of Tulsa
The University of Tulsa (TU) is a private research university in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It has a historic affiliation with the Presbyterian Church and the campus architectural style is predominantly Collegiate Gothic. The school traces its origin to ...
and the Centro de Excelencia Empresarial (
Monterey, Mexico
Monterrey ( , ) is the capital and largest city of the northeastern state of Nuevo León, Mexico, and the third largest city in Mexico behind Guadalajara and Mexico City. Located at the foothills of the Sierra Madre Oriental, the city is anc ...
).
Darity was awarded the 2012 Westerfield Award from the
National Economic Association
The National Economic Association (NEA) is a learned society established in 1969, focused on initiatives in the field of economics.
The purposes of the Association are "to promote the professional lives of minorities within the profession. In a ...
, their highest honor. Previous recipients include
Nobel Laureate
The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make out ...
Sir
W. Arthur Lewis
Sir William Arthur Lewis (23 January 1915 – 15 June 1991) was a Saint Lucian economist and the James Madison Professor of Political Economy at Princeton University. Lewis was known for his contributions in the field of economic development. I ...
,
Phyllis Ann Wallace
Phyllis A. Wallace (1921–1993) was a distinguished African American economist and activist, as well as the first woman to receive doctorate of economics at Yale University. Her work tended to focus on racial, as well as gender discrimination in ...
and Marcus Alexis.
He was also honored as the Lewis-Oaxaca Distinguished Lecturer at the 2016 American Economic Association's Summer Mentoring Pipeline Conference.
University of North Carolina
After joining the staff in 1983, Darity became the Cary C. Bohamer Professor of Economics and Sociology at the
University of North Carolina
The University of North Carolina is the multi-campus public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the NC School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referred to as the UNC Sy ...
He taught economics and was a research professor of public policy,
African and African-American studies, and economics.
He directed the economics department's undergraduate honors and graduate studies programs.
In 2001 he was appointed Director of UNC's Institute of African American Research.
The institute's stated mission is "to help lead scholarly investigation into all aspects of black life, as well as public and private policies and programs affecting their lives."
Duke University
As of 2012, Darity is the Arts and Sciences Professor of Public Policy in the
Sanford School
The Sanford School is a private school for co-ed students in PreK through high school, located in Hockessin, Delaware. Originally known as "Sunny Hills School", it was founded on September 23, 1930, by Sanford and Ellen Sawin, in memory of their ...
at
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...
.
He is also chair of the school's department of African and African American Studies and Economics,
research professor of their Public Policy Studies,
and director of their Research Network on Racial and Ethnic Inequality.
Publications
In 2020 Darity published, with co-author A. Kirsten Mullen, the award-winning boo
From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century Darity was editor-in-chief of the 2008 edition of the ''
International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences
The ''International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences'' was first published in 1968 and was edited by David L. Sills and Robert K. Merton. It contains seventeen volumes and thousands of entries written by scholars around the world. The 2nd editi ...
'',
published by Macmillan Reference.
Darity has published more than 250 articles in professional journals, including the American Economic Review, the Journal of Economic Perspectives, the Journal of Economic Literature, the Review of Black Political Economy, the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, the American Sociological Review, the Journal of Socio-Economics, and the Journal of Human Resources. His research has also been featured on
National Public Radio
National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other n ...
and
PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...
.
He has made editorial contributions to various news outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Tribune, the Boston Globe, Bloomberg, the Los Angeles Times, and Black Star News.
Research
Focus
Darity's research has been wide-ranging, but a central organizing theme of his work has been exploration of multiple aspects of
economic inequality
There are wide varieties of economic inequality, most notably income inequality measured using the distribution of income (the amount of money people are paid) and wealth inequality measured using the distribution of wealth (the amount of we ...
. That interest has led him to examine the phenomenon of colorism, discrimination in the
labor market and "marriage market" outcomes, parallels between caste inequality in India and racial inequality in the United States, ethnic diversity and conflict, the social psychological effects of exposure to unemployment, and schooling and the racial achievement gap. At the international level, Darity has studied financial crises in
developing countries
A developing country is a sovereign state with a lesser developed industrial base and a lower Human Development Index (HDI) relative to other countries. However, this definition is not universally agreed upon. There is also no clear agreem ...
,
North-South theories of development and trade, and the relationship between the
Trans-Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, or Euro-American slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and i ...
and the
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...
. He also has examined the relationship between research in the social sciences on race and racism and African American fictional literature and film.
Notable studies
Discrimination in employment
With Samuel Myers Jr., Darity conducted a series of studies on the statistical measurement of discrimination in labor markets.
In 1998, he published his most cited paper with Patrick Mason in the Journal of Economic Perspective where they advanced a detailed critique of the two dominant theoretical approaches to discrimination in economics, the taste and the statistical models. His research with Arthur Goldsmith on the psycho-emotional impact of joblessness led to a companion study demonstrating that taking into account motivation more than offset the negative impact on estimates of discrimination from inclusion of measures of Armed Forces Qualification Test Scores in the analysis. With Major Coleman and Rhonda Sharpe, Darity was a member of a team that found in a paper published in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology in 2008 that white workers tend to grossly over-report their exposure to discrimination in the workplace, while black workers tend to grossly under-report their exposure to discrimination in the workplace.
Baby bonds program
With economist Darrick Hamilton, Darity has proposed a federal asset building program aimed at remediating the racial wealth gap.
Popularly labeled "
baby bonds
Baby bonds are a government policy in which every child receives at birth a publicly funded trust account, potentially with more generous funding for lower-income families. Economists William Darity and Darrick Hamilton proposed the policy in 20 ...
," the program calls for the issuance of a publicly funded trust account for each newborn child accessible when the child reaches young adulthood. The amount of the trust account is to be calibrated on the basis of the child’s family’s wealth position.
Job guarantee
A long-time advocate of a federal job guarantee, in 2012, in response to the protracted economic crisis produced by the Great Recession, Darity called for establishment of the National Investment Employment Corps, assuring all U.S. citizens over the age of 18 employed work at a salary above the poverty line as well as the standard benefits package for all civil servants, including medical coverage and retirement savings.
Reparations
In 1989, while preparing the introduction for a volume of essays, edited by Richard America, by economists gauging the size of a reparations fund for African Americans, Darity became convinced that a program of redress of this type is an essential step that must be taken by the nation. He has spent the subsequent three decades doing intensive research on and engaged in advocacy for black reparations. As early as 2003, he published a paper coauthored with Dania Frank Francis in the proceedings of the American Economic Association called “The Economics of Reparations.”
Subsequently, in 2008, he published the article “Forty Acres and a Mule in the Twenty-First Century” in ''Social Science Quarterly''.
In 2020, with A. Kirsten Mullen, he published ''From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century'', a book that synthesized and extended his previous work on the topic.
As a leading voice in the current national conversation on African American reparations, Darity argues recipients must be black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved in the United States, the monetary target must be sufficient funds to eliminate black-white differences in average wealth, the federal government must execute the program, and the major form of outlays must be direct payments to eligible recipients.
Partial publication history
*''Labor Economics: Problems in Analyzing Labor Markets'' (1992, editor)
*''Macroeconomics'' (1994, co-author)
*''Persistent Disparity: Race and Economic inequality in the United States since 1945'' (1999, co-author)
* ''Boundaries of Clan and Color: Transnational Comparisons of Inter-Group Disparity'' (2003, co-editor)
* ''Economics, Economists, and Expectations: Microfoundations to Macroapplications'' (2004, co-author)
* ''
International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences
The ''International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences'' was first published in 1968 and was edited by David L. Sills and Robert K. Merton. It contains seventeen volumes and thousands of entries written by scholars around the world. The 2nd editi ...
'' (2007, editor-in-chief)
*''International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences Volume 2: Cohabitation Ethics in Experimentation'' (2007, editor-in-chief)
*For-Profit Universities: The Shifting Landscape of Marketized Higher Education (2017, editor)
*
From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twentieth Century(2020, co-author)''
References
External links
*
Complete publication historyDr. Darity Interview on BlogTalkRadioMarch 2010)
OurCommonGround.com*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Darity, Sandy, Jr.
Living people
1953 births
Brown University alumni
Alumni of the London School of Economics
MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences alumni
20th-century American economists
21st-century American economists
African-American economists
Grinnell College faculty
University of Maryland, College Park faculty
University of Texas at Austin faculty
Simmons University faculty
Claremont McKenna College faculty
Spelman College faculty
Academics of the London School of Economics
University of Tulsa faculty
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill faculty
Duke University faculty
Macroeconomists
Marshall Scholars
Public economists
Black studies scholars
American economic historians
Welfare economists
Political economists
Labor economists
Cultural economists
Historians from California
Presidents of the National Economic Association