Discrimination In Housing Market Research Articles

Is hiding my first name enough? Using behavioural interventions to mitigate racial and gender discrimination in the rental housing market

Is hiding my first name enough? Using behavioural interventions to mitigate racial and gender discrimination in the rental housing market

Neighbourhood structure and environmental quality: A fine-grained analysis of spatial inequalities in urban Germany

Urban environments are characterised by sparsity of space, elevated levels of air pollution and limited exposure to natural environments. Yet, residential environmental quality varies substantially both between and within cities. This study combines information on the socio-economic and demographic composition of 243,607 urban neighbourhoods with administrative and remote sensing data on the spatial distribution of industrial plants and urban green space to investigate patterns of environmental inequality in urban Germany at unprecedented levels of spatial granularity. It disentangles neighbourhood disadvantages experienced by foreign minorities (non-nationals) from those experienced by low-income households in order to assess the plausibility of economic explanations of residential sorting. The high level of spatial granularity makes it possible to examine patterns of environmental inequality not only between the relatively large areas that have been used as units of analysis in previous work but also within them, while reducing the threat of ecological bias. Results indicate that non-nationals are more likely to be exposed to industrial air pollution and less likely to live close to green spaces. This association holds even after adjusting for neighbourhood income composition and in fixed-effects specifications that restrict the analysis to within-city variation. I find no evidence for environmental inequality by socio-economic status. Exploratory sub-sample analyses show that neighbourhood disadvantages for non-nationals are higher in cities characterised by high levels of anti-foreigner sentiment, pointing towards housing market discrimination as a potentially important driver of foreign residents’ neighbourhood disadvantage.

Immigrants’ earnings and neighbourhood economic wealth: the conditioning role of citizenship

ABSTRACT Do higher earnings translate into better living conditions for immigrants? While spatial assimilation theory argues that residential patterns reflect economic assimilation, place stratification theory states that immigrants face structural obstacles in their search for better housing, including housing market discrimination. Existing scholarship does not facilitate distinguishing between these contrasting perspectives as analyses typically compare across immigrant groups and natives. By contrast, we focus in this paper on legal status discrimination within the immigrant population in the Netherlands, by testing whether citizenship acquisition provides a positive signal towards housing market actors and moderates the effect of income on residential mobility. We analyse this relation using administrative microdata and using fixed-effects models to control for selection into naturalisation due to unobserved time-invariant heterogeneity. We find that the relation between income gains and immigrants' propensity to live in wealthier neighbourhoods is stronger for naturalised immigrants. These results corroborate the place stratification argument and suggest that naturalisation may help reduce nationality based discrimination.

Citizenship acquisition and spatial stratification: Analysing immigrant residential mobility in the Netherlands

Whereas the so-called ‘citizenship premium’ in the labour market has been widely studied, we know little about how naturalisation affects immigrants’ lives beyond work and income. Focusing on the Netherlands, this paper analyses the relationship between citizenship acquisition and immigrant residential mobility, in particular the propensity of immigrants to move away from areas with high concentrations of migrants. We draw on register data from Statistics Netherlands ( N = 234,912). We argue that possessing Dutch citizenship reduces spatial stratification by diminishing the risk of housing market discrimination, thereby facilitating mobility outside of migrant-concentrated areas. Our findings show that naturalised immigrants are 50% more likely to move out of concentrated neighbourhoods, all else constant. The effect of naturalisation is especially relevant for renting without housing benefits and for home ownership, and for mid-risk immigrants who earn around the median income and hold permanent jobs, whose applications face strong scrutiny from landlords, rental agencies and mortgage lenders.

COVID-19 cases in US counties: roles of racial/ethnic density and residential segregation

ABSTRACT Objective To investigate how racial/ethnic density and residential segregation shape the uneven burden of COVID-19 in US counties and whether (if yes, how) residential segregation moderates the association between racial/ethnic density and infections. Design We first merge various risk factors from federal agencies (e.g. Census Bureau and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) with COVID-19 cases as of June 13th in contiguous US counties (N = 3,042). We then apply negative binomial regression to the county-level dataset to test three interrelated research hypotheses and the moderating role of residential segregation is presented with a figure. Results Several key results are obtained. (1) Counties with high racial/ethnic density of minority groups experience more confirmed cases than those with low levels of density. (2) High levels of residential segregation between whites and non-whites increase the number of COVID-19 infections in a county, net of other risk factors. (3) The relationship between racial/ethnic density and COVID-19 infections is enhanced with the increase in residential segregation between whites and non-whites in a county. Conclusions The pre-existing social structure like residential segregation may facilitate the spread of COVID-19 and aggravate racial/ethnic health disparities in infections. Minorities are disproportionately affected by the novel coronavirus and focusing on pre-existing social structures and discrimination in housing market may narrow the uneven burden across racial/ethnic groups.

Different samples, different results? How sampling techniques affect the results of field experiments on ethnic discrimination

This paper explores a possible sampling bias in field experiments through a unique combination of a large-scale field experiment on ethnic discrimination in the German rental housing market (N = 2,992 tested apartments) and data on the internet housing market where the apartments were sampled from (observation of the whole platform for about one year). Up to now, most field experiments sampled on the level of suppliers (not apartments) and selected the tested suppliers within a short field period (point sampling). This probably led to an over-representation of small suppliers and apartments that had already been advertised for a long time, resulting in an under-representation of large suppliers and new vacancies. We analyze how both issues affect the measurement of ethnic discrimination and its underlying mechanisms. With our case study on the German housing market, we first observed the expected sampling bias: There was a strong over-sampling of small suppliers and apartments already offered for a long time. Second, this bias was found to have only little impact on the descriptive result of substantial discrimination against Turkish applicants. There was only a slight tendency that discrimination was higher for small suppliers and offers advertised for a relatively short time (i.e. new vacancies). Overall, we conclude that evidence on ethnic discrimination and its underlying risk factors is remarkably robust to the used sampling technique. Although there were no indications of a severe bias, our market data illustrate opportunities to test the effects of market conditions that often remained unnoticed.

Structural versus ethnic dimensions of housing segregation

ABSTRACTRacial residential segregation is still very high in many American cities. Some portion of segregation is attributable to socioeconomic differences across racial lines (what we call structural factors); some portion is caused by purely racial factors, such as housing market discrimination and preferences for the race of one’s neighbors. Past attempts to measure the structural component of segregation have generally focused on only 1 socioeconomic status (SES) variable and have produced results that are high in potential measurement error. In this article, we use an innovative method and uniquely suitable data (geocoded microdata obtained through the U.S. Census Bureau’s Research Data Center [RDC] program) to disaggregate segregation into a “structural” and a residual component. Our measure shows the amount of segregation that would remain if we could randomly assign households to housing units based only on nonracial socioeconomic characteristics. This inquiry provides valuable building blocks for understanding and remedying housing segregation.

Ethnic and gender discrimination in the private rental housing market in Finland: A field experiment.

Ethnic and gender discrimination in a variety of markets has been documented in several populations. We conducted an online field experiment to examine ethnic and gender discrimination in the private rental housing market in Finland. We sent 1459 inquiries regarding 800 apartments. We compared responses to standardized apartment inquiries including fictive Arabic-sounding, Finnish-sounding or Swedish-sounding female or male names. We found evidence of discrimination against Arabic-sounding names and male names. Inquiries including Arabic-sounding male names had the lowest probability of receiving a response, receiving a response to about 16% of the inquiries made, while Finnish-sounding female names received a response to 42% of the inquires. We did not find any evidence of the landlord’s gender being associated with the discrimination pattern. The findings suggest that both ethnic and gender discrimination occur in the private rental housing market in Finland.

What Explains the Differential Treatment of Renters Based on Ethnicity? New Evidence From Sydney

This article conducts the first contextual analysis of ethnic-based discrimination in an Australian rental housing market: metropolitan Sydney. Logistic regression is employed to investigate how the likelihood of five behaviors by rental agents that may favor Anglo home seekers varies according to characteristics of the agent, home seeker, dwelling, and neighborhood. We find that several forms of discrimination favoring Anglos are consistently more likely in neighborhoods characterized by lower crime rates and shares of renter households, regardless of the ethnicity of the agent. Other patterns are consistent with the hypothesis that, in general in the Sydney rental market, agents regardless of ethnicity are motivated to discriminate by statistical discrimination. Our result that profit, not prejudice, drives discrimination implies that it will prove resilient to unfettered housing market forces and changes in societal ethnic tolerance, but instead, must be addressed through enhanced civil rights enforcement strategies.

Job Accessibility of the Poor in Los Angeles

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Kain's Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis (SMH) suggests that disadvantaged groups who reside in inner-city neighborhoods have low access to regional jobs. We continue to debate this assertion because empirical studies over decades have conflicting results. This research examines whether the poor face spatial mismatch and how suburbanization has changed their job accessibility, in the Los Angeles region between 1990 and 2007–2011. I define spatial mismatch as occurring when the poor in the inner city have lower job accessibility than their suburban counterparts. I estimate job accessibility based on the spatial distribution of jobs and job seekers traveling via private automobiles. My results present a complicated picture: Inner-city poor job seekers have higher job accessibility than their suburban counterparts because many jobs remain in the inner city; thus, the inner-city poor do not face spatial mismatch. Moreover, suburbanization has evened out the differences in the job accessibility of the poor and non-poor. However, the advantage of living in the inner city for job access declines with rapid employment suburbanization.Takeaway for practice: My research suggests that, since the poor do not face spatial mismatch, spatial policies commonly advocated to address their employment challenges—moving people to the suburbs, bringing jobs to the inner city, or providing mobility options—will not be effective. Giving people cars can help overcome both spatial and nonspatial barriers, but is not politically feasible. Planners should develop synergetic policies to complement spatial approaches including reducing labor and housing market discrimination, providing education and training, developing better job search skills, and creating supportive social connections.

Ethnic differentials on the labor market in the presence of asymmetric spatial sorting: Set identification and estimation

This paper aims to isolate the ethnic gap on the labor market that can be attributed to ethnicity and not to differences in individual characteristics or residential location. Controlling for residential location is important as ethnic minorities often live in distressed neighborhoods. It is also challenging because spatial sorting is likely to differ across ethnicities because of labor- or housing-market discrimination. This paper shows that controlling for neighborhoods and observed individual characteristics fails to provide a consistent estimate for the component of the gap accountable to ethnicity only. However, under some assumptions, the quantity of interest is set identified even when heterogeneous sorting patterns across ethnicities are allowed for and the set estimate can still be informative. A two-step estimation method is presented and applied to explain the ethnic employment differential in France, between French individuals of North African ancestry and those with non-immigrant parents. Most of the gap is not due to differences in residential location or individual characteristics, but rather to ethnicity itself.

Understanding housing: The intellectual legacy of John Quigley

John Quigley was an important and beloved figure in housing and urban economics who died in 2012, but many non-specialists are only dimly aware of his contributions. This essay surveys his intellectual legacy, beginning with his early work with John Kain. Their research pioneered the application of hedonic price models to housing micro-data, and kicked off a literature that asked whether housing market discrimination led African-Americans to pay more for equivalent units. Over four decades, Quigley continued to develop housing price models, championing a hybrid approach that used both repeat sales and other transactions. Together with Robert Van Order, Quigley developed empirical tests of rational mortgage default and prepayments. Their work found that frictionless models are often rejected by the data. Quigley's work on green buildings documented their high economic returns; his work on homelessness pointed to high housing prices and overly restrictive supply regulations. Together with Karl Case and Robert Shiller, Quigley demonstrated the strong effects of housing wealth on consumption.

The Not-in-My-Property Syndrome: The Occurrence of Ethnic Discrimination in the Rental Housing Market in Belgium

This paper aims at achieving a better understanding of rental housing market discrimination against ethnic minorities. There remain substantial lacunae in the scientific knowledge about the association between the concentration of ethnic minorities in the neighbourhood and discrimination, and possible differences in discrimination based on host society language proficiency. Although these associations have been considered in the USA, they have been neglected in the European context, which is quite different. A telephone survey offered data on 579 properties that is linked to (i) whether the fictitious ethnic minority candidate masters the host society language or not, (ii) the rent of the offered unit, (iii) the percentage of minorities in the neighbourhood and (iv) the socioeconomic background of the neighbourhood. Using multilevel modelling, we found (i) that host society language proficient migrants are discriminated against as often as non-proficient migrants and found (ii) a curvilinear association between rent and discrimination, with more discrimination for both cheaper and more expensive rental offers. We found (iii) no association between the presence of minorities in the neighbourhood and the occurrence of discrimination, contrary to previous research in the USA, and found (iv) no association between discrimination and the socioeconomic background of a neighbourhood.

The Changs Next Door to the Diazes

Asian Americans and Mexican Americans began to purchase homes in Los Angeles’s San Gabriel Valley in large numbers beginning in the 1950s and 1960s. They approached the task with a full awareness of the realities of structural racial discrimination and the limitations it imposed on where they could and could not live. As largely middle-income homebuyers, however, they had a degree of choice distinct from their poorer, nonwhite counterparts that was also informed by differentiated positions in American racial hierarchies vis-à-vis property—in particular, the “model minority” status of Asian Americans, and the ambiguously white standing of Mexican Americans. However, even while housing market discrimination shaped their initial movements to a large degree, Asian American and Latina/Latino residents of the area ultimately participated in producing what George Lipsitz has called a moral geography of differentiated space, in which their motivations and long-term actions differed significantly from those of white residents, who fled the area en masse during the same time period. This “moral geography” is both continuous with earlier histories of multiracial communities in the greater Los Angeles region, and distinctively new. It signifies an emergent multiracial, “nonwhite” identity that challenges conventional notions of race and class in American suburbs.

A Field Experiment of Discrimination in the Norwegian Housing Market: Gender, Class, and Ethnicity

We test for gender, class, and ethnic discrimination in the Norwegian rental housing market by using fake application letters. Females, individuals with high job status, and ethnic Norwegians are more likely to receive positive responses. For example, being an Arabic man and working in a warehouse is associated with a 25 percentage point lower probability of receiving a positive response when showing interest in an apartment, as compared to an ethnically Norwegian female economist. We conclude that gender, class, and ethnic discrimination do exist in the Norwegian housing market, and ethnic discrimination seems to be the most prevalent form of discrimination. <i>(JEL R21)</i>

Gender and ethnic discrimination in the rental housing market

We use a field experiment to measure discrimination in the housing market in Stockholm. Four fictitious persons, of different gender, with distinct-sounding Arabic or Swedish names, are randomly assigned to vacant apartments. We extend the study by Ahmed and Hammarstedt (2008). There are two new results. First, we provide evidence that there is no or little gender premium for the female with the Arabic name, which suggests that ethnic discrimination dominates the effects of gender. Second, discriminatory behaviour is only found in the suburbs or satellite cities/towns of Stockholm County not in the densely populated, affluent, city centre. Moreover, we can replicate that there is a gender premium for females with Swedish names. However, we are not able to confirm that males with Arabic names face discrimination.

Ethnic discrimination in the Italian rental housing market

With a field experiment carried out on the Internet, this paper studies the presence of discrimination in the Italian rental housing market against persons whose names are distinctive of different ethnic groups and gender. Further, we investigate whether providing information on the job or personal characteristics of the applicant may reduce the extent of discrimination. We also study if sending ill-formed emails negatively affects immigrants’ chances of success in receiving a positive response. We created twelve fictitious individuals: four with Italian-sounding names, four with typical Arab/Muslim names and four with East European-sounding names. We made these individuals send emails to apply for vacant rental apartments in 41 Italian cities. The results provide a multifaceted picture. The degree of discrimination varies across ethnic groups, genders and the level of information, but seems to be present only in part of the country, and is also closely correlated with the size of the flat. Perfect mastery of the receiving-country’s language does not play an important role.

Can Discrimination in the Housing Market Be Reduced by Increasing the Information about the Applicants?

We investigate how increasing the information about applicants affects discrimination in the rental housing market. We let four fictitious applicants, two with typical Arab/Muslim names and two with typical Swedish names, use application letters containing different amounts of information to apply for apartments over the Internet in Sweden. The Arab/Muslim applicants received fewer responses from the landlords than did the Swedish applicants. All of the applicants gained by providing more information about themselves, but the amount of discrimination against the Arab/Muslim applicants remained unchanged, indicating that increasing the amount of information about the applicants will not reduce discrimination.

Discrimination in the rental housing market: A field experiment on the Internet

This paper presents a field experiment on discrimination in the housing market, using the Internet as a research platform. The procedure involved our creating three fictitious persons with distinctive sounding ethnic and gender names. These individuals applied for vacant rental apartments in Sweden that were advertised by landlords on the Internet. Our findings show that the Arabic/Muslim male received far fewer call backs, enquiries, and showings than the Swedish male. Our observations also indicate that the Swedish female met with less difficulty in terms of finding an apartment than the Swedish male. Thus, based on our findings, we conclude that ethnic, as well as gender discrimination exists in the Swedish rental housing market.

Demobilization of the Individualistic Bias: Housing Market Discrimination as a Contributor to Labor Market and Economic Inequality

Racial discrimination in the nation's housing markets and patterns of residential segregation have contributed to labor market inequalities and economic disparities generally. Housing values are suppressed in minority communities, undercutting wealth accumulation by nonwhite families. Job growth in suburban communities coupled with the concentration of public housing in central city communities restricts minority access to jobs. A range of institutionalized practices by housing providers and public policies by government agencies at all levels have nurtured and exacerbated racial inequalities grounded in traditional stereotypes. But a number of policy options are available to ameliorate these inequities. Eschewing individualistic explanations of racial inequality that point to personal deficiencies and cultural characteristics of minority communities, these policy recommendations—premised on a structural perspective—offer promise for reducing racial inequities in housing and related economic disparities.