Ethnic Penalties and Hiring Discrimination: Comparing Results from Observational Studies with Field Experiments in the UK

Wouter Zwysen,Anthony Heath,Valentina Di Stasio

doi:10.1177/0038038520966947

Wouter Zwysen, Anthony Heath + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038520966947

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Abstract

Ethnic minorities fare less well on average in the labour market than their white British counterparts. Experimental research shows that employers discriminate against ethnic minority applicants while hiring, but it is impossible to say from these studies how much of minorities’ overall disadvantage – which reflects compositional differences and search behaviour as well as hiring – is due to discrimination. This article connects results from two UK-based field experiments with ethnic penalties estimated from comparable samples of the UK Labour Force Survey and Understanding Society to show the relation between hiring discrimination and labour market penalties, for several ethnic minority groups. Higher hiring discrimination is indeed associated with worse ethnic employment penalties, but similarly discriminated against groups do not necessarily face the same ethnic penalties. We provide a discussion of possible reasons for this variation. Our research points to socio-economic resources and supply-side differences among ethnic groups as plausible explanations.

Highlights

Ethnic minorities are generally less likely to be employed or to have good jobs than the majority group, even after accounting for socio-economic differences (Heath et al, 2008; Van Tubergen et al, 2004)
In this article we compare the hiring discrimination results from field experiments, which can be seen as counterfactual estimates of the disadvantage on the labour market that would occur if all compositional differences and labour market behaviour were kept constant, with the actual labour market disadvantage of a comparable representative group as obtained through statistical analyses of secondary data
We argue that to understand the occurrence of ethnic disadvantage in the labour market, data on hiring discrimination obtained from field experiments must be connected to observed labour market outcomes

Summary

Introduction

Ethnic minorities are generally less likely to be employed or to have good jobs than the majority group, even after accounting for socio-economic differences (Heath et al, 2008; Van Tubergen et al, 2004). Already a decade ago, Pager (2007: 120) suggested, as one promising avenue for further research on discrimination, that future studies ‘should make efforts to empirically map the findings from audit studies [the term she uses to refer to field experiments] onto population surveys of job search and employment patterns’. We take up this challenge in the current study. Group-differences in the process of looking for work, by activating social networks and community resources, seem a likely explanation of why certain groups manage to bypass discrimination by employers

A Hiring DiscriminaƟon

Findings

Conclusion