Arab and Muslim men’s earnings fell 9 to 11 percent after September 11

Evidence

Another study published in the Journal of Population Economics in 2005 discovered that “Middle Eastern Arab men and Afghan, Iranian, and Pakistani men experienced a significant earnings decline relative to non-Hispanic whites between 2000 and 2002.” The reason? “The unanticipated events of September 11th, 2001 negatively affected the labor-market income of the groups most closely associated with the ethnicity of the terrorists.” Likewise, Columbia University’s Neeraj Kaushal and two other social scientists sought to quantify any decline through 2005. Their painstakingly detailed study, published in the Spring 2007 issue of the Journal of Human Resources, found that earnings fell 9 to 11 percent for Arab and Muslim men’s real wages and weekly earnings. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 710

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: whether these wage declines persisted or recovered beyond 2005, and how they compare to other post-crisis ethnic wage shocks.