William A. Darity Jr.

William A. Darity Jr., known to colleagues as Sandy, is an economist whose work examines inequality across racial, ethnic and class groups. The American Economic Association's profile records his 2012 Westerfield Award, an honor recognizing an African American economist, and his education at Brown University and MIT. In 2024, the association named him a Distinguished Fellow, one of its highest honors, citing his leadership in contemporary debates on reparations.

Darity began teaching economics at the University of Texas at Austin in 1978, earning tenure there in 1981, and moved to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1983 before joining Duke full time in 2007. Working with other scholars, he helped develop stratification economics, an approach that examines how group position and social structures shape economic outcomes rather than treating disparities as the sum of individual choices. His 2022 survey article in the Journal of Economic Literature set out the subfield's origins and development, tracing an intellectual tradition that treats identity and group position as central to economic life.

Duke identifies him as the Samuel DuBois Cook Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics, and as the former director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity. His research includes schooling, labor outcomes and racial wealth inequality. With A. Kirsten Mullen, he coauthored the 2020 book From Here to Equality, which sets out both the historical record of the racial wealth gap, where the average white household holds about ten dollars for every one held by the average Black household, and a detailed proposal for reparations to documented descendants of people enslaved in the United States. The book appeared in a second edition with a new preface from the authors.

His policy work connects with Darrick Hamilton's baby bonds proposal, a plan for federally funded trust accounts for newborns aimed at closing the wealth gap. He is also affiliated with the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.