PERI researcher Jeannette Wicks-Lim examines how racism has caused Black and White women to interact with the labor market in profoundly different ways.  This has led to a significant racial earnings gap that has persisted from 1979 to 2016.  In particular, Black married women have historically been much more active in the labor force than White married women. To account for this expression of White privilege, Wicks-Lim examines the earnings gap by household type. This approach reveals how a roughly 120 percent White earnings premium has persisted among single mothers, single women without children, and among married women without children.  

Workers face regular economic challenges from caring for children and adult relatives and friends. Christian Weller and Michele Tolson show that many caregivers, especially women, earn less, work fewer hours, and face greater emotional and physical demands from care. These factors can translate into a lower likelihood of participating in a 401(k) plan, contributing to such a plan and saving for one’s own retirement.  Among single women and men, caregiving risk widens the retirement savings gap by more than 10 percent.

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In Keynes Against Capitalism, PERI researcher James Crotty demonstrates that John Maynard Keynes—the most influential economist of the 20th Century—advanced a coherent program on behalf of 'Liberal Socialism.'  Crotty's view sharply diverges from mainstream perspectives which have long held that Keynes's overarching project was mild reform of capitalism.  Professor James Galbraith writes "This book is a marvel of economic narrative, with Crotty's clarity and Keynes's elegance in stunning counterpoint, from Versailles through the Depression to the war and Bretton Woods, all bringing forth the great, neglected fact that Keynes's Liberal Socialism was far more radical than modern memory would have us think."