Question

Which of the following would constitute a violation of the "four-fifths" rule?

75 percent of white applicants were hired, while only 65 percent of African-American applicants were hired

65 percent of whites pass a pre-employment-screening test, while only 55 percent of African-Americans pass the test

90 percent of whites pass a pre-employment-screening test, while only 70 percent of African-Americans pass the test

35 percent of whites pass a pre-employment screening test, while only 30 percent of African-Americans pass the test.

An organization hires 30 whites and 15 African Americans from a pool of 90 white and 20 African-American applicants.

Answer 1

The four-fifths rule states that a test has a disparate impact if the hiring rate for the minority group is less than four-fifths or 80 per cent of the hiring rate for the majority group.

It is not intended to be controlling in all circumstances. If, for the sake of illustration, we assume that nationwide statistics show that use of an arrest record would disqualify 10% of all Hispanic persons but only 4% of all whites other than Hispanic (hereafter non-Hispanic), the selection rate for that selection procedure is 90% for Hispanics and 96% for non-Hispanics. Therefore, the 4/5 rule of thumb would not indicate the presence of adverse impact (90% is approximately 94% of 96%).  

So here the answer is :

An organization hires 30 whites and 15 African Americans from a pool of 90 white and 20 African-American applicants.

Applicants	Not hired	Hired	Selection rate/Percentage Hired
90 white	60	30	33%
20 Black	5	15	75%

Thus white selection rate = 33%

Black selection rate = 75%

Thus 75/30 = 250, Which is greater than 80%