Is this why you earn less than your colleagues?
Race and Family background vs Income — A plunge into data
Introduction
Many academic papers have already established that family background plays an important role in the academic achievement of children and their eventual success in life. In this article, my goal is simply to examine the relationship between the family background of developers and their current level of income in the tech industry.
When it comes to income distribution and earnings across races and social backgrounds, most people will agree that there is a huge disparity and imbalance. Although these disparities in income have not yet been proven to be a direct result of upbringing and racial identity, the topic is receiving increasing interest in the public space since widening racial wealth gaps were observed in several economic indicators.
In the tech industry, developers hold some of the most sought-after and lucrative jobs in the world. The globalisation of work has removed market and location barriers to income and as such, background and racial identity should matter very little to earnings in our current society.
Irrespective of my opinion or anyone else’s though, let’s see what data has to tell us about this. This is why I decided to query Stackoverflow’s 2017 Annual Developer Survey to find answers to some very interesting questions that should give us some insight.
The survey had 64,000 participants from 213 countries. Its aim is to annually collate information on multiple aspects of software development and data analytics roles out there. Up to150 questions were asked in the survey, including:
>>Which of the following do you identify as?
>>Do you program as a hobby or contribute to open source projects?
>>What is the highest level of education received by either of your parents?
>>What is your current annual base salary, before taxes, and excluding bonuses, grants, or other compensation?
For this analysis, I set out to answer the following questions.
How does the annual income of developers vary between ethnic groups?
A quick look at the demography of the survey respondents tells us that more than 70% of the survey respondents are of White or European descent while developers of Native American, Pacific Islander, or Indigenous Australian descent are the least represented at just 1%.
Even though the Native American, Pacific Islander, or Indigenous Australian developers have the lowest number of respondents, the data shows that they are the only ethnic group with average annual earnings of more than $70,000.
Several factors could be responsible for this high-income level of the group, such as participants’ years of experience, quality of submitted data, and location. Although in an increasingly globalized world and with the current mainstream adoption of remote work, I expect the geographical location of developers to matter less and less.
A very curious case though is the South Asians. The survey results showed that they have the second-highest number of participants, but it is clear here that they get paid the least salary at just about $31,000 annually. So, does this tell us something about the general income level in South Asia or can we say that South Asians charge lower wages than everyone else in the industry? Whatever the case may be, these findings are just observations. The reality could be very different.
Do student developers of these backgrounds also have different salary expectations from their peers?
Since the survey also asked for the post-graduation expected salary of students learning to code at the time, I figured I can also explore which students from which ethnic group already placed a limit on their earning potential. The expectation is that the students' salary projections will also follow a similar pattern as the salary of professional developers explored above.
Unsurprisingly, White or European and East Asian students have a higher perception of their worth on the job market compared to others.
On the other hand, Native American, Pacific Islander, or Indigenous Australian students expected the lowest annual income of all groups, by a margin. This is a surprising development because we just found out earlier that professional developers of these descents earn the highest in the market. Thus, it begs the question of whether the students have sufficient knowledge of the industry or the data provided by respondents is the problem.
Coming second-bottom on the expected salary list are the South Asians. The result is not surprising as it gives credence to the possibility of a generally lower income level for South Asian developers compared with their counterparts.
Lastly, are you likely to earn more if either of your parents graduated from college?
Parents’ level of education is a huge factor that can put a ceiling on the level of success attained by the children. This is why policy-makers and even some employers try to provide extra support for first-generation college students.
With this in mind, I decided to see how the annual income of developers within the same ethnic group will look if I separate those whose parents have at least a Bachelor’s degree from those whose parents do not.
The chart below shows the earning gap proportion between the two groups for each ethnic group.
For most ethnic groups except those of Middle Eastern and Native American, Pacific Islander, or Indigenous Australian ancestry, those whose parents graduated college earn more than those whose parents did not.
The earning gap is most pronounced for South Asians - developers whose parents have at least a Bachelor's degree can earn up to 65% more than those whose parents are not as educated. They are followed by developers of Black or African descent — about 33% difference.
Conclusion
To recap, we explored the 2017 Stack Overflow survey data to answer the three questions we posed above. We found that:
- Native American, Pacific Islander, or Indigenous Australian and White or European developers earn more than everyone else while South Asians earn the least.
- Students learning to code that have White or European and East Asian ancestries have higher salary expectations than every other ethnic group.
- Developers with a parent having at least a Bachelor’s degree generally tend to earn more than developers whose parents are less educated.
Hence, except you have Middle Eastern, Indigenous Australian or Native American ancestors, you stand a chance of earning less than your colleagues if your parents did not graduate from college — but you can relax, this is not the result of a formal study into the subject, it was purely observational.
So, do YOU think your family background or race has affected your earnings?
Let me know what you think!
For more information on the analysis, proceed to GitHub here
