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What does the AFQT really measure: Race, wages, schooling and the AFQT score

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William M. Rodgers Iii at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
William M. Rodgers Iii
William Spriggs at Howard University
William Spriggs
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Abstract

Recent literature on the black-white wage gap continues to show that a large residual due to race remains, and during the 1980s it grew in size. One interpretation is that the residual gap measures the existence of labor market discrimination. Another interpretation is that imbedded in the residual gap are racial differences in unobservable skills that grew during the 1980s, or that racial differences in these skills remained constant, but their returns grew. To account for these unobservable skills, researchers use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). The NLSY contains the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT), a direct measure of skills obtained via family and school environments. When researchers include the AFQT composite score, the black-white wage gap narrows. Doing this, they assume that the AFQT score is a racially unbiased predictor of wages. We present evidence that generates doubts that the AFQT score is racially unbiased. We first show that F-Tests reject the hypothesis that AFQT scores equally predict African American and white wages. Second, we show that a significant difference exists in the ability of variables representing family background, school quality, and psychological characteristics to estimate black and white test scores. Third, we present our estimates of the black-white wage gap using a racially unbiased AFQT composite score to control for racial differences in job skills. The score has a significant independent effect on wages, and a very small effect on the race coefficient.
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What does the AFQT really measure: Race, wages, schooling and the AFQT score
William M Rodgers III; William E Spriggs
Review of Black Political Economy; Spring 1996; 24, 4; ABI/INFORM Global
pg. 13
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... The narratives of government dependency are also questioned, as Chachere (1984) documents differences in how corporate, agriculture, and human services subsidy programs are perceived, with the latter recipients of welfare programs for families viewed as "supplicants and pariahs." Rodgers and Spriggs (1996) explore issues surrounding racial differences in labor market skills and wages, concurrent with a wide range of scholars within economics, including Neal and Johnson (1996^), Currie andThomas (1999^), andHeckman (1995^). Rodgers and Spriggs (1996) interrogate the efficacy of the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) as a racially unbiased estimate of ability; this work and the discourse that followed have important implications for how the relationship between Black-White earnings gaps and skills accumulation is understood. ...
... Rodgers and Spriggs (1996) explore issues surrounding racial differences in labor market skills and wages, concurrent with a wide range of scholars within economics, including Neal and Johnson (1996^), Currie andThomas (1999^), andHeckman (1995^). Rodgers and Spriggs (1996) interrogate the efficacy of the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) as a racially unbiased estimate of ability; this work and the discourse that followed have important implications for how the relationship between Black-White earnings gaps and skills accumulation is understood. Their findings were situated among a set of studies that called into question the effectiveness of the AFQT as a proxy for labor market skills and ability, finding instead that skills gaps explain relatively little of the racial wage gap. ...
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