经济学人下载:美国的工作与种族 薪资差距(1)

United States
美国

Working and Race: Colouring in
工作与种族：上色

A trio of labour economists suggest that effort at work is correlated with race.
由三名劳动经济学家组成的团队声称工作效率与人种有关。

GIVEN the long history of making racial slurs about the efforts of some workers, any study casting black and Hispanic men as lazier than whites and Asians is sure to court controversy.
长期以来，与员工工作效率有关的种族歧视争议屡见不鲜，宣称黑人和拉丁裔人比白人和亚洲人更懒散的研究结果一定会引发口水战。

A provocative new working paper by economists Daniel Hamermesh, Katie Genadek and Michael Burda sticks a tentative toe into these murky waters.
而由经济学家Daniel Hamermesh、Katie Genadek和Michael Burda提交的一份新论文则在这潭浑水中掀起了又一轮风波。

They suggest that America’s well-documented racial wage gap is overstated by 10% because minorities, especially men, spend larger portions of their workdays not actually working.
他们声称，在美国，有证据支持的种族薪资差距数据被夸大了10%，其原因是少数族裔员工，尤其是其中的男性员工在工作时间内存在更多的偷懒现象。

After rejecting a number of plausible explanations for why this might be, the authors finally attribute the discrepancy to unexplained “cultural differences”.
在排除了一系列看似可能的原因后，论文作者最终将这种差距归结为原因不明的“文化差异”。

Acutely aware of the sensitivity of these findings, the professors delayed publication until after the presidential election.
三名教授们深知这一研究结果过于敏感，所以他们选择在美国总统大选结束之后才对外公布。

“I knew full well that Trump and his minions would use it as a propaganda piece,” says Mr Hamermesh, a colourful and respected labour economist.
Hamermesh先生是一位备受尊敬的劳动经济学家，同时他自己也属于有色人种。他表示：“我非常清楚特朗普和他的手下会借此进行宣传。”

The paper may yet be seized on by those who are keen to root out “political correctness” and are perennially unhappy with current anti-discrimination laws.
这篇论文可能会被一些试图推翻“政治正确性”以及对目前的反歧视法令始终持反对态度的人士所利用。

The study’s method is straightforward.
研究采用的方法简单直接非白种人的男性员工每天在工作时间内的偷懒时间要长出1.1%，相当于每天多出5分钟。

The data come from nearly 36,000 “daily diaries”, self-reporting on how Americans spent their working hours, collected from 2003 to 2012.
数据来自2003-2012年的近36000份“日常日记”，日记的作者们描述了美国人如何支配日常工作时间。

Relying on the assumption that workers are equally honest in admitting sloth, the authors calculate the fraction of time spent not working while on the job—spent relaxing or eating, say—and find that it varies by race to a small but statistically significant degree.
在假定员工们都同样诚实地承认偷懒的前提下，研究人员计算了员工在工作时间内未工作（休息或吃零食）的时间占比，其结果是，不同人种的偷懒时间存在差异，其数值不大却具有统计学意义。

The gap remains, albeit in weaker form, even with the addition of extensive controls for geography, industry and union status, among others.
即使加入地理位置、行业和工会状况等各种控制条件的制约，差距会变小但却依然存在。

Non-white male workers spend an additional 1.1% of the day not working while on the job, or an extra five minutes per day.
有色人种的男性员工每天在班上用于非工作内容的时间要多1.1%，或者说每天多五分钟。