We evaluate the causes of the wage gap at the intersection of race, ethnicity and gender over time in the United States. We analyse the wage gaps for women of colour along three dimensions: relative to White women, relative to men of their respective race/ethnicity, and relative to White men. Using the American Community Survey, we replicate earlier findings based on the Current Population Survey data which show that, on average, Black women face an unexplained wage gap relative to White men that goes beyond the simple addition of the separate unexplained gender and racial wage gaps. This can be seen persistently between 1980 and 2019, and we find it is true across the entire wage distribution but especially notable at higher centiles. From 1990 through 2019, Black and Hispanic women saw stalled progress, while White women continued to make steady progress closing the wage gap relative to White men.

We pool four Surveys of Consumer Finances to measure the extent to which tolerance of debt is influenced by macroeconomic events (the Great Recession and events in early adulthood), personal experiences of negative economic shocks (unemployment and difficulty making payments), and gender. Recent personal experience is the best predictor of debt tolerance. Unemployment and difficulty paying bills increase tolerance of debt to meet living expenses by 20%–30%. A woman who has one of these negative experiences is substantially less likely than a man to approve of debt used to buy luxuries. While neither recent macroeconomic events nor macroeconomic conditions in young adulthood affect debt tolerance, there is some evidence of a gendered response to the Great Recession. As women observed the negative effects of the mortgage crisis and the Great Recession on other women, it reinforced their belief that it is okay for people like them to use credit to bridge gaps in income.

This article investigates the credit card debt puzzle. Simultaneously holding credit card debt and liquid assets is puzzling given the sizeable difference between interest rates of debt and assets. However, this behavior is common—about 31% of households in the 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances. The cost of co-holding may be justified if consumers anticipate future restrictions in credit or if they need to maintain liquidity. Other existing explanations for co-holding include impulsive spending and low financial literacy. This research reveals a new explanation for the credit card debt puzzle: consumers’ overconfidence of their financial knowledge. Using a Coarsened Exact Matching method, we found that overconfident consumers were 20%–40% more likely to co-hold credit card debt and liquid assets.

This paper presents a novel way to use Twitter to engage students in advanced economics courses. While prior research provides some uses of Twitter in introductory economics courses, little research exists on the use of Twitter in upper level economics courses. This paper provides one of the first pedagogical examples of Twitter use to engage students in an upper level economics elective.

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