Data and Code for: Analytic Approaches to Measuring the Black-White Wealth Gap

Does the measurement of the racial wealth gap shift
depending on the model, method, and data set used? We contrast the traditional
mean Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition with the distributional Recentered Influence
Function (RIF) methods. The untransformed, logarithm-transformed, and inverse
hyperbolic sine-transformed versions in both Survey of Consumer Finances and
Panel Study of Income Dynamics data sets exhibit similarities. The
Oaxaca-Blinder (mean) decomposition highlights that receiving an inheritance
explains a larger portion of the racial wealth gap than educational attainment.
Conversely, the RIF method at the median suggests that educational attainment
accounts for more of the wealth gap than inheritance receipt.