Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Re: Illegitimacy and the Black-White Test-Score Gap   [Robert VerBruggen]

Roger—I agree that illegitimacy can affect other areas of life, and almost certainly, if we could restore the black illegitimacy rate to what it was before the welfare state, the black-white gap in academic performance would close some.

However, I don't share your confidence (expressed both here and on the Corner) that closing the illegitimacy-rate gap, in and of itself, will somehow catapult blacks to near-equality academically. This implies that between blacks and whites, differences in illegitimacy explain nearly 100 percent of differences in test scores.

One way to test this idea is to see if the black-white score gap moves in tandem with the black-white illegitimacy gap. On the contrary, illegitimacy rose pretty much continuously between 1940 and the turn of the century, with black illegitimacy always rising faster than white illegitimacy—while the black-white test-score gap either improved or didn't move (depending upon whom you ask).

This situation, in which increased illegitimacy corresponds to steady or even improving test scores, would seem to suggest that other factors are having a large impact on the gap.

01/27 04:26 PMShare