The Great Recession and U.S. partial discrimination orderings by race

We gauge the impact of the Great Recession on racial and ethnic subgroups by applying a stochastic dominance method proposed by Le Breton et al. (2012). The method generates a partial discrimination ordering, or alternatively, a measure of the economic advantage for one subgroup relative to another. We apply the method to Current Population Survey data for 2006 through 2012, covering the recession years and the beginning of the recovery, and construct a comprehensive income measure that includes in-kind transfers and taxes. We find statistically significant differences in the impact of the Great Recession at the lower tails of the income distributions for blacks and Hispanics.