評論
打印
United States
美國
Working and Race: Colouring in
工作與種族：上色
A trio of labour economists suggest that effort at work is correlated with race.
由三名勞動經濟學家組成的團隊聲稱工作效率與人種有關。
GIVEN the long history of making racial slurs about the efforts of some workers, any study casting black and Hispanic men as lazier than whites and Asians is sure to court controversy.
長期以來，與員工工作效率有關的種族歧視爭議屢見不鮮，宣稱黑人和拉丁裔人比白人和亞洲人更懶散的研究結果一定會引發口水戰。
A provocative new working paper by economists Daniel Hamermesh, Katie Genadek and Michael Burda sticks a tentative toe into these murky waters.
而由經濟學家Daniel Hamermesh、Katie Genadek和Michael Burda提交的一份新論文則在這潭渾水中掀起了又一輪風波。
They suggest that America’s well-documented racial wage gap is overstated by 10% because minorities, especially men, spend larger portions of their workdays not actually working.
他們聲稱，在美國，有證據支持的種族薪資差距數據被夸大了10%，其原因是少數族裔員工，尤其是其中的男性員工在工作時間內存在更多的偷懶現象。
After rejecting a number of plausible explanations for why this might be, the authors finally attribute the discrepancy to unexplained “cultural differences”.
在排除了一系列看似可能的原因后，論文作者最終將這種差距歸結為原因不明的“文化差異”。
Acutely aware of the sensitivity of these findings, the professors delayed publication until after the presidential election.
三名教授們深知這一研究結果過于敏感，所以他們選擇在美國總統大選結束之后才對外公布。
“I knew full well that Trump and his minions would use it as a propaganda piece,” says Mr Hamermesh, a colourful and respected labour economist.
Hamermesh先生是一位備受尊敬的勞動經濟學家，同時他自己也屬于有色人種。他表示：“我非常清楚特朗普和他的手下會借此進行宣傳。”
The paper may yet be seized on by those who are keen to root out “political correctness” and are perennially unhappy with current anti-discrimination laws.
這篇論文可能會被一些試圖推翻“政治正確性”以及對目前的反歧視法令始終持反對態度的人士所利用。
The study’s method is straightforward.
研究采用的方法簡單直接非白種人的男性員工每天在工作時間內的偷懶時間要長出1.1%，相當于每天多出5分鐘。
The data come from nearly 36,000 “daily diaries”, self-reporting on how Americans spent their working hours, collected from 2003 to 2012.
數據來自2003-2012年的近36000份“日常日記”，日記的作者們描述了美國人如何支配日常工作時間。
Relying on the assumption that workers are equally honest in admitting sloth, the authors calculate the fraction of time spent not working while on the job—spent relaxing or eating, say—and find that it varies by race to a small but statistically significant degree.
在假定員工們都同樣誠實地承認偷懶的前提下，研究人員計算了員工在工作時間內未工作（休息或吃零食）的時間占比，其結果是，不同人種的偷懶時間存在差異，其數值不大卻具有統計學意義。
The gap remains, albeit in weaker form, even with the addition of extensive controls for geography, industry and union status, among others.
即使加入地理位置、行業和工會狀況等各種控制條件的制約，差距會變小但卻依然存在。
Non-white male workers spend an additional 1.1% of the day not working while on the job, or an extra five minutes per day.
有色人種的男性員工每天在班上用于非工作內容的時間要多1.1%，或者說每天多五分鐘。
譯文來源考研英語時事閱讀
