Differences in work hours and hours preferences by race in the US

Significant differences exist in actual and preferred work hours by race. S pecifically, black males work 20 percent fewer annual hours than white male s. The differences between black and white women are small. Black workers a re significantly more likely than white workers to prefer additional work a nd fewer are satisfied with their current hours of work. I use the hours-in equality hypothesis of Bell and Freeman (1995, 1997) to evaluate the extent to which race differences in work hours and hours preferences are related to race differences in incentives. I demonstrate that whereas white workers work longer hours in response to overall wage variation in their relevant labor market cell, black workers react to the wage variation among black wo rkers but not to the variation overall. The fact that labor market incentiv es are different for otherwise similar black and white workers is difficult to reconcile with standard competitive theory.