Changes in the Amount and Type of Social Science Research on Discrimination: 1950 to 2015

Abstract

How has the amount and type of social science research on discrimination changed over time? We address this substantively and normatively important question by conducting automatic text analysis on a large corpus of over 470,000 social science research articles published in 512 academic journals between 1950 and 2015. The results of this analysis show that (1) over time, social scientists across fields are increasingly producing research that engages with the concept of discrimination, and (2) that they write more about discrimination against some groups than others. We discuss how these findings highlight future directions for discrimination research.

Keywords: discrimination, inequality, social science

JEL Classification: J15, J16, J7, J71