Disparities

                                Disparities


Former Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen, in addressing a Brookings Institution audience said: "Within the economics profession, women and minorities are significantly underrepresented. And data compiled by the American Economic Association's Committees on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession and the Status of Minority Groups in the profession show that there has been little or no progress in recent decades. Women today make up only about 30 percent of Ph.D. students. Within academia, their representation drops the higher up one goes on the career ladder. The share of Ph.D.s awarded to African Americans is low, and it has declined slightly in recent decades." Yellen says that diversity in economics is a matter of "basic justice."


So, do disparities prove discrimination? And injustice? How exactly does one assess the innumerable factors in growth and development? And what kind of thinking is this from an economist of her importance?




Sharks are nine times likelier to attack and kill men than they are women. Despite the fact that men are 50% of the population, (and so are women,) men are struck by lightning six times as often as women. Of those killed by lightning, 82% are men. Are sharks and lightning the agents of some Angry Power? Why are children of the same parents and households so different?


Can't the Fed do something to clean these disparities up?