Devah Pager

Devah Pager is an American sociologist best known for her research on racial discrimination in employment and the American criminal justice system. She is currently Associate Professor of Sociology at Princeton University.^[1]

Pager earned her doctorate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2002. Prior to that she received Masters degrees from Stanford University and the University of Cape Town in South Africa. As part of her doctoral dissertation research Pager conducted an experiment in which she enlisted young men to pose as job applicants with similar characteristics. She found that a black applicant received a callback or job offer half as often as an equally qualified white applicant. A black applicant with a clean record got a callback or job offer about as often as a white applicant with a felony conviction. She later replicated the experiment in New York City and found similar results. The dissertation was awarded the "Best Dissertation Prize" by the American Sociological Association^[2] and was later published as a series of articles^{[citation needed]} and a book, Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration (University of Chicago Press, 2007).

Pager's work has been widely featured in the media, including the New York Times,^[3][4][5] the Wall Street Journal,^[6][7] the Chicago Tribune,^[8] and in CNN's documentary Black in America.^[9]

Selected bibliography

• Pager, Devah. 2003. “The Mark of a Criminal Record.” American Journal of Sociology 108(5):937-975.
• Pager, Devah, Bruce Western, and Bart Bonikowski. 2009. "Discrimination in a Low Wage Labor Market: A Field Experiment." American Sociological Review 74(October):777-799
• Pager, Devah. 2007. MARKED: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration. Chicago: University of Chicago Press^[10]
• Quillian, Lincoln and Devah Pager. 2010. "Estimating Risk: Stereotype Amplification and the Perceived Risk of Criminal Victimization." Social Psychology Quarterly 73(1):79-104
• Grodsky, Eric and Devah Pager. 2001. “The Structure of Disadvantage: Individual and Occupational Determinants of the Black-White Wage Gap.” American Sociological Review:66(4):542-567

References

1. ^ Princeton University Department of Sociology
2. ^ American Sociological Association Dissertation Award Recipient
3. ^ "When a Dissertation Makes a Difference," 3/20/04, Brooke Kroeger, New York Times
4. ^ "Study Shows More Job Offers for Ex-Convincts Who Are White," 6/17/05, Paul von Zielbauer, New York Times
5. ^ "Even Now, There's Risk in 'Driving While Black,'" 6/15/2009, Brent Staples, New York Times
6. ^ "Racial Discrimination Is Still at Work," 9/4/03, David Wessel, The Wall Street Journal
7. ^ "Prison Record Looms Larger as an Obstacle to Advancement," 6/22/05, Greg Ip, The Wall Street Journal
8. ^ "Black Men's Pay in Top Jobs Lags," 8/15/2001, Quynh-Giang Tran, The Chicago Tribune
9. ^ CNN's Black in America
10. ^ University of Chicago Press: Marked