| Abstract: |
From the late 2000s, racial salary discrimination against black players
emerged in the National Basketball Association (NBA) league. At the same time
in the United States, the income gap between white and black citizens, which
had been decreasing in the previous 20 years, stalled in the mid-2000s and
started to increase again from the late 2000s. In this study, we examine
whether increasing racial salary discrimination against black players in the
NBA is positively associated with the non-shrinking income gap between white
and black citizens. Using census data, we calculate the median income ratio of
white and black males in each metropolitan area where at least one NBA team is
located. Then, we examine whether the white premium of the salary of an NBA
player is correlated with the median income ratio between white and black
citizens of the metropolitan area where the player's team is located. We find
that the white premium becomes higher in a metropolitan area where the median
income gap of the citizen becomes smaller. Thus, increasing salary gap against
black players in the NBA in the late 2000s and 2010s is not positively
associated with non-shrinking income gap between white and black citizens |