Is discrimination the main cause of economic outcomes for individuals?
If discrimination cannot be taken to account for outcomes, how can they be explained? Do the lifestyles of members of ethnic minorities reflect their personal choices or their shared culture at all? Do personal qualities make any difference? To take a highly visible example, the success of British athletes during the last Olympics suggests that athletic prowess is not equally distributed across ethnic groups. More important still, how important is culture? Consider attitudes to marriage and children. Decisions to marry or stay single and to have few or many children vary significantly from group to group and make a big difference to representation in the workplace. Family breakdown: Family breakdown has a major impact on ability to get jobs in the public sector. Regardless of their ethnic group, it would not be easy for a lone parent to hold down a full-time job as a teacher or civil servant. Indeed, lone parents are only expected to work 16 hours a week to qualify for the working fami
