Diverse Outcomes
Diversity Initiatives and White Americans’ Perceptions of Racial Victimhood
Cheryl Kaiser et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Seven experiments explore whether organizational diversity initiatives heighten White Americans’ concerns about the respect and value afforded toward their racial group and increase their perceptions of anti-White bias. The presence (vs. absence) of organizational diversity initiatives (i.e., diversity awards, diversity training, diversity mission statements) caused White Americans to perceive Whites as less respected and valued than Blacks and to blame a White man’s rejection for a promotion on anti-White bias. Several moderators were tested, including evidence that Whites were clearly advantaged within the organization, that the rejected White candidate was less meritorious than the Black candidate, that promotion opportunities were abundant (vs. scarce), and individual differences related to support for the status hierarchy and identification with Whites. There was little evidence that these moderators reduced Whites’ perceptions of diversity initiatives as harmful to their racial group.
Systemic Discrimination Among Large U.S. Employers
Patrick Kline, Evan Rose & Christopher Walters
NBER Working Paper, July 2021
Abstract:
We study the results of a massive nationwide correspondence experiment sending more than 83,000 fictitious applications with randomized characteristics to geographically dispersed jobs posted by 108 of the largest U.S. employers. Distinctively Black names reduce the probability of employer contact by 2.1 percentage points relative to distinctively white names. The magnitude of this racial gap in contact rates differs substantially across firms, exhibiting a between-company standard deviation of 1.9 percentage points. Despite an insignificant average gap in contact rates between male and female applicants, we find a between-company standard deviation in gender contact gaps of 2.7 percentage points, revealing that some firms favor male applicants while others favor women. Company-specific racial contact gaps are temporally and spatially persistent, and negatively correlated with firm profitability, federal contractor status, and a measure of recruiting centralization. Discrimination exhibits little geographical dispersion, but two digit industry explains roughly half of the cross-firm variation in both racial and gender contact gaps. Contact gaps are highly concentrated in particular companies, with firms in the top quintile of racial discrimination responsible for nearly half of lost contacts to Black applicants in the experiment. Controlling false discovery rates to the 5% level, 23 individual companies are found to discriminate against Black applicants. Our findings establish that systemic illegal discrimination is concentrated among a select set of large employers, many of which can be identified with high confidence using large scale inference methods.
“Maybe baby?” The employment risk of potential parenthood
Jamie Peterson Gloor, Tyler Okimoto & Eden King
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research grounded in gender role theories has shown that women face numerous employment disadvantages relative to men, with mothers often facing the greatest obstacles. We extend this literature by proposing that motherhood is not a necessary condition for women to face motherhood penalties. Instead, managers' expectations that an applicant will have a child in the near future (i.e., “maybe baby” expectations) increases their perceptions of risk associated with employing childfree, childbearing-aged women -- but not men. Investigating the intersection of gender and age, and integrating economic theories of discrimination, we conceptualize hiring as a risk assessment process, proposing that managers' risk perceptions drive more precarious employment conditions for this group of women. Results from a field study with early career employees (Study 1) and a randomized experiment with hiring managers (Study 2) support our predictions across attitudinal (e.g., desire to offer a temporary job contract; Study 2) and objective indicators (e.g., having a temporary job contract; Study 1); female applicants can also mitigate this “maybe baby” risk by signaling a lack of interest in having children or by emphasizing their commitment and work ethic (Study 2). Our findings suggest that the perceived risks of parenthood can be hazardous for child-bearing-aged, childfree working women who simply may become parents (vs. men and mothers; vs. childfree women who are significantly younger or older than the average age of the first childbearing in the local context).
Is there a racial gap in CEO compensation?
Xiaohu Guo et al.
Journal of Corporate Finance, forthcoming
Abstract:
Racial gap in corporate leadership has prompted continuous and intense discussions, motivating research into the conditions minorities face after they reach top management positions. We contribute to the ongoing debate in this area by examining the association between CEO race and compensation. We do not find evidence for a significant racial wage gap at the CEO level across various econometric specifications, including total-sample OLS, firm-fixed effects to capture CEO transitions within firm, propensity score matched sample, and instrumental variable analysis. The insignificant results hold for total compensation, cash compensation, and non-cash compensation. Further, there is no consistent evidence of differences in CEO compensation for any of the major racial groups (Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians). Based on our results, we conclude that racial minorities who make it to the CEO position in Corporate America are compensated at similar levels to their Caucasian counterparts.
Task-Based Discrimination
Erik Hurst, Yona Rubinstein & Kazuatsu Shimizu
NBER Working Paper, July 2021
Abstract:
Why did the Black-White wage gap converge from 1960 to 1980 and why has it stagnated since? To answer this question, we introduce a unified model that integrates notions of both taste-based and statistical discrimination into a task-based model of occupational sorting. At the heart of our framework is the idea that discrimination varies by the task requirement of each job. We use this framework to identify and quantify the role of trends in race-specific factors and changing task prices in explaining the evolution of the Black-White wage gap since 1960. In doing so, we highlight a new task measure - Contact tasks – which measures the extent to which individuals interact with others as part of their job. We provide evidence that changes in the racial gap in Contact tasks serves as a good proxy for changes in taste-based discrimination over time. We find that taste-based discrimination has fallen and racial skill gaps have narrowed over the last sixty years in the United States. However, since the 1980s, the effect of declining racial skill gaps and discrimination on the Black-White wage gap were offset by the increasing returns to Abstract tasks which, on average, favored White workers relative to Black workers.
Barrier to Entry or Signal of Quality? The Effects of Occupational Licensing on Minority Dental Assistants
Xing Xia
Labour Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Economic theory suggests that occupational licensing can be a barrier to entry that restricts labor supply (Friedman, 1962; Stigler, 1971) or a signal of quality that enhances the labor market (Leland, 1979). This paper studies two types of licenses for dental assistants (DAs) in the U.S. to illustrate the competing supply-restricting and quality-signaling effects of licensing on minority workers. Specifically, I study the effects of introducing the X-ray permit, a state-issued license to perform X-ray procedures that also carries information about a DA’ s competence, against that of the entry-level license, which provides little information about a DA’ s competence. I find that the X-ray permit requirement reduces the wage gap between non-Hispanic white and minority DAs by 8 percent, presumably because it helps minority DAs secure jobs that entail X-ray procedures. In contrast, entry-level licensing does not reduce the racial wage gap. These findings suggest that licensing alleviates statistical discrimination if it reveals information about the holder's productivity.
The Motherhood Penalty in Context: Assessing Discrimination in a Polarized Labor Market
Patrick Ishizuka
Demography, forthcoming
Abstract:
Prior research provides important insights into employer discrimination against mothers but has focused exclusively on college-educated mothers in professional and managerial occupations. As a result, we lack evidence about whether less-educated mothers navigating the low-wage labor market experience similar disadvantages and whether the mechanisms underlying discrimination vary across contexts. These gaps are important because more- and less-educated mothers increasingly possess distinct resources and face unique demands both at home and at work, which may impact employer perceptions of conflicts between motherhood and job performance. This study reports results from an original field experiment in which 2,210 fictitious applications were submitted to low-wage service and professional/managerial job openings across six U.S. cities, experimentally manipulating signals of motherhood status. Findings provide causal evidence that employers in both contexts discriminate against mothers relative to equally qualified childless women. However, within labor market segments, distinct job demands listed in job advertisements are associated with stronger discrimination: time pressure, collaboration, and travel in professional/managerial jobs and schedule instability in low-wage service jobs. These findings have important implications for our understanding of the mechanisms underlying mothers' disadvantages in an increasingly polarized labor market.
Occupational Inflexibility and Women's Employment During the Transition to Parenthood
Patrick Ishizuka & Kelly Musick
Demography, forthcoming
Abstract:
The typical U.S. workplace has adapted little to changes in the family and remains bound to norms of a workweek of 40 or more hours. How jobs are structured and remunerated within occupations shapes gender inequality in the labor market, and this may be particularly true at the critical juncture of parenthood. This study provides novel evidence showing how the inflexibility of occupational work hours shapes new mothers' employment. We use a fixed-effects approach and individual-level data from nationally representative panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (N = 2,239 women) merged with occupational characteristics from the American Community Survey. We find that women in pre-birth occupations with higher shares working 40 or more hours per week and higher wage premiums to longer work hours are significantly less likely to be employed post-birth. These associations are small in magnitude and not statistically significant for men, and placebo regressions with childless women show no associations between occupational inflexibility and subsequent employment. Results illustrate how individual employment decisions are jointly constrained by the structure of the labor market and persistent gendered cultural norms about breadwinning and caregiving.
Option to cooperate increases women's competitiveness and closes the gender gap
Alessandra Cassar & Mary Rigdon
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
We advance the hypothesis that women are as competitive as men once the incentive for winning includes factors that matter to women. Allowing winners an opportunity to share some of their winnings with the low performers has gendered consequences for competitive behavior. We ground our work in an evolutionary framework in which winning competitions brings asymmetric benefits and costs to men and women. In the new environment, the potential to share some of the rewards from competition with others may afford women the benefit of reaping competitive gains without incurring some of its potential costs. An experiment (N = 438 in an online convenience sample of U.S. adults) supports our hypothesis: a 26% gender gap in performance vanishes once a sharing option is included to an otherwise identical winner-take-all incentive scheme. Besides providing a novel experiment that challenges the paradigm that women are not as motivated to compete as men, our work proposes some suggestions for policy: including socially-oriented rewards to contracts may offer a novel tool to close the persistent labor market gender gap.
Against the odds: Developing underdog versus favorite narratives to offset prior experiences of discrimination
Samir Nurmohamed, Timothy Kundro & Christopher Myers
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although considerable theory and research indicates that prior experiences of discrimination hinder individuals, it remains unclear what individuals can do to offset these repercussions in the context of their work and career. We introduce two distinct types of self-narratives -- underdog and favorite -- and test whether these types of personal stories shape the effects of prior experiences of discrimination on performance efficacy, which in turn impact performance. Across two time-lagged experiments with job seekers in both field and online settings, we theorize and find that underdog narratives are more effective than favorite narratives at moderating the effects of prior experiences of discrimination on performance through performance efficacy. Our results present new insights for theory and research on expectations, self-narratives, and resilience in the face of discrimination and adversity.
Intranasal Oxytocin, Testosterone Reactivity, and Human Competitiveness
Boaz Cherki et al.
Psychoneuroendocrinology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Competitiveness is an essential feature of human social interactions. Despite an extensive body of research on the underlying psychological and cultural factors regulating competitive behavior, the role of biological factors remains poorly understood. Extant research has focused primarily on sex hormones, with equivocal findings. Here, we examined if intranasal administration of the neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) – a key regulator of human social behavior and cognition – interacts with changes in endogenous testosterone (T) levels in regulating the willingness to engage in competition. In a double-blind placebo-control design, 204 subjects (102 females) self-administrated OT or placebo and were assessed for their willingness to compete via an extensively-validated economic laboratory competition paradigm, in which, before completing a set of incentivized arithmetic tasks, subjects are asked to decide what percentage of their payoffs will be based on tournament paying-scheme. Salivary T concentrations (n = 197) were measured throughout the task to assess endogenous reactivity. Under both OT and placebo, T-reactivity during competition was not associated with competitiveness in females. However, in males, the association between T-reactivity and competitiveness was OT-dependent. That is, males under placebo demonstrated a positive correlation between T-reactivity and the willingness to engage in competition, while no association was observed in males receiving OT. The interaction between OT, T-reactivity, and sex on competitive preferences remained significant even after controlling for potential mediators such as performance, self-confidence, and risk-aversion, suggesting that this three-way interaction effect was specific to competitive motivation rather than to other generalized processes. These findings deepen our understanding of the biological processes underlying human preferences for competition and extend the evidence base for the interplay between hormones in affecting human social behavior.
Consequences of a Zero-Sum Perspective of Gender Status: Predicting Later Discrimination against Men and Women in Collaborative and Leadership Roles
Joelle Ruthig et al.
Sex Roles, July 2021, Pages 13–24
Abstract:
The zero-sum perspective (ZSP) implies gains made by one group (e.g., women) translate into equivalent loss for another group (e.g., men). The present studies extend prior research by examining whether individuals with a ZSP of gender status exhibit later discrimination. In Study 1, 624 U.S. undergraduates completed online measures of political orientation, social dominance orientation (SDO), right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), sexism, and ZSP of gender status. One month later, they read three online scenarios depicting a male target and three depicting a female target in a leadership or collaborative role, then rated their endorsement of the target. Regression results indicated that beyond the effects of participants’ gender, political orientation, RWA, SDO, and sexism, the greater participants’ ZSP of gender status, the less they endorsed female leaders and collaborators. ZSP did not predict endorsement of male targets. In Study 2, 249 adults across the United States completed the same initial measures as in Study 1 then one month later, read two online scenarios depicting a male target and two depicting a female target, then rated target endorsement. Greater ZSP of gender status again predicted less endorsement of female targets. A significant ZSP x Target Gender interaction showed endorsement of female targets declined with increasing ZSP whereas endorsement of male targets remained unchanged across levels of ZSP. These findings show discrimination against female leaders and collaborators by individuals who possess a ZSP of gender status and provide insight into how win-lose perceptions of gender status may impede gender equality.
Racial Disparities in Pre-K Quality: Evidence From New York City’s Universal Pre-K Program
Scott Latham et al.
Educational Researcher, forthcoming
Abstract:
New York City’s universal prekindergarten (pre-K) program, which increased full-day enrollment from 19,000 to almost 70,000 children, is ambitious in both scale and implementation speed. We provide new evidence on the distribution of pre-K quality in New York City by student race/ethnicity, and investigate the extent to which observed differences are associated with the spatial distribution of higher quality providers. Relative to other jurisdictions, we find the average quality of public pre-K providers is high. However, we identify large disparities in the average quality of providers experienced by Black and White students, which is partially explained by differential proximity to higher quality providers. Taken together, current racial disparities in the quality of pre-K providers may limit the program’s ability to reduce racial achievement gaps.
How Do Anti-discrimination Laws Affect Firm Performance and Financial Policies? Evidence from the Post-World War II Period
Daniel Greene & Jaideep Shenoy
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We exploit the staggered passage of state-level fair-employment laws in the post-World War II period to examine how stronger worker protection against racial discrimination affects firm profitability and financing decisions. We find that firms experience a decline in operating profitability after the passage of anti-discrimination laws. We also document that the adoption of these laws leads to a reduction in debt ratios, which suggests that firms are able to partially offset the negative effects on operating profitability by adjusting their capital structure. Consistent with theoretical predictions, these effects of anti-discrimination laws are more pronounced for firms in states and cities with a greater proportion of African Americans, firms with high labor intensity, firms in states experiencing high African American migration, and firms in concentrated industries. Some of our evidence suggests that anti-discrimination laws lead to a reduction in statistical discrimination or monopsony power rather than taste-based discrimination. Taken together, our results are supportive of theoretical models of discrimination and show that racial discrimination laws significantly affect firm operating performance and financial policies.