William A. Darity Jr.

Early life, education

William A. "Sandy" Darity Jr. was born in Norfolk, Virginia and raised largely in Amherst, Massachusetts. His father, William A. Darity Sr., was a trustee at the University of North Carolina. Darity Jr. graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor's degree from Brown University in 1974, where he earned honors in economics and political science. He was named a Marshall Scholar after undergraduate school, and on the scholarship spent two years studying at the London School of Economics and Political Science. In 1978 he completed a doctorate in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Academic career

In 1980, Dr. Darity became a staff economist in the research department of the National Urban League. He began a long period as a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1983. He was then a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors in 1984.

Darity has served as a Director or on the board of a number of organizations. From 1989 to 1990 was a fellow at the National Humanities Center. He became a member of the American Economic Association's executive committee from 1993 to 1996, and in 1997 he was President of the Southern Economic Association. He is also a former President of the National Economic Association.

He has served as a professor at Grinnell College, the University of Maryland at College Park, the University of Texas at Austin, Simmons College in Boston, and Claremont McKenna College. From 2003 to 2005 he was a William and Camille Cosby Endowed Professor at Spelman College. He has also either taught or served as a fellow at London School of Economics and Political Science, the University of Tulsa and the Centro de Excelencia Empresarial (Monterey, Mexico).

Darity was awarded the 2012 Westerfield Award from the National Economic Association, their highest honor. Previous recipients include Nobel Laureate Sir W. Arthur Lewis, Phyllis Wallace and Marcus Alexis.

Duke University

As of 2012, Darity is the Arts and Sciences Professor of Public Policy in the Sanford School at Duke University. He is also chair of the school's department of African and African American Studies and Economics, research professor of their Public Policy Studies, and director of their Research Network on Racial and Ethnic Inequality.

University of North Carolina

After joining the staff in 1983, Darity became the Cary C. Bohamer Professor of Economics and Sociology at the University of North Carolina He taught economics and was a research professor of public policy, African and African-American studies, and economics. He directed the economics department's undergraduate honors and graduate studies programs.

In 2001 he was appointed Director of UNC's Institute of African American Research. The institute's stated mission is "to help lead scholarly investigation into all aspects of black life, as well as public and private policies and programs affecting their lives."

Publications

Darity is editor-in-chief of the new edition of the 2008 International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, which is published by Macmillan Reference. He has co-edited a number of books, including Macroeconomics (1984) and Boundaries of Clan and Color: Transnational Comparisons of Inter-Group Disparity (2003).

He has co-authored books such as Economics, Economists, and Expectations: Microfoundations to Macroapplications (2004) and has published more than 125 articles in publications such as American Economic Review and the Journal of Economic Perspectives. His research has also been featured on National Public Radio and PBS.

Focus

Darity's economic research has varied widely in topic, but many of his studies focus largely on economic stratification, economic inequality, the labor market and "marriage market" outcomes, caste and race, disconnected youth, ethnic diversity and conflict, and job tenure versus work experience. He has specifically studied financial crises in developing countries, North-South theories of development and trade, and the Industrial Revolution. He has also studied the trans-Atlantic slave trade, or what is called the African diaspora, the spread of African culture and influence through the slave trade. He has stated that much of the history wasn't documented or analyzed, and that there's a need to fill in gaps of knowledge and analyze cause and effect in modern times.

As a social theorist and researcher, he has also studied social psychological effects of exposure to unemployment, group-based post traumatic stress disorder, schooling and the racial achievement gap, racialized "tracking" in schools, the economics of black reparations, and social policy as they relate to race and ethnicity. Recently he has focused on what he perceives as a "disconnect" between the social sciences and the humanities, particularly in the field of African American fictional literature and film.

Incident reports

Darity was one of three conductors and writers of a study that found that white respondents tend to over-report incidents of mistreatment at work, while black employees are not aware of the mistreatment or are less likely to report them.

Baby Bonds Program

With sociologist Darrick Hamilton, Darity has proposed a federal wealth redistribution program aimed at remediating the racial wealth gap. Called the "baby bonds", the program calls for the issuance of government backed bonds for each child born into poverty to be redeemed when the child reaches 18 years of age.

Skin tone and marriage

In 2009, Darity and two other authors published "Shedding 'Light' on Marriage: The Influence of Skin Shade on Marriage for Black Females" in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. The study found that American black women with lighter skin were more likely to attain a "high status black spouse" than darker-skinned women, and analyzed social theories that could explain the disparity.

Unemployment rates

He has also been referenced by the media as an expert concerning Barack Obama's political strategies as related to unemployment ratings and economic policy. Darity criticized Obama's October 2011 economic strategy as "bribing the private sector to put people back to work. I was hoping that there would be some effort to create a plan, there would be some effort to have a plan for direct job creation, where the federal government would directly put people back to work."

In February 2012 Darity responded critically through The Hill to a government report claiming that black unemployment in the United States had dropped from 15.8% to 13.6%. According to Darity, the drop was more likely the result of a massive spike in black workers dropping from the work force, and therefore no longer being included in the statistics for black employment. "If a large proportion of the persons exiting from the labor force were black, that could drop the black [unemployment] rate without any significant new employment," Darity wrote.

In 2012 in response to the protracted economic crisis, Darity called for a federal jobs guarantee program called the National Investment Employment Corps, which would guarantee all U.S. citizens over the age of 18 a job at a minimal salary of $20,000, as well as $10,000 in benefits, including medical coverage and retirement savings.

Personal life

Darity lives in Durham, North Carolina, with his family. He plays harmonica in a local blues band.

Partial publication history