C-LeB28
Moderator
NY Times
December 12, 2002
What's in a Name? Perhaps Plenty if You're a Job Seeker
By ALAN B. KRUEGER
WHAT'S in a name? Evidently plenty if you are looking for a job.
To test whether employers discriminate against black job applicants, Marianne Bertrand of the University of Chicago and Sendhil Mullainathan of M.I.T. conducted an unusual experiment. They selected 1,300 help-wanted ads from newspapers in Boston and Chicago and submitted multiple r?sum?s from phantom job seekers. The researchers randomly assigned the first names on the r?sum?s, choosing from one set that is particularly common among blacks and from another that is common among whites.
So Kristen and Tamika, and Brad and Tyrone, applied for jobs from the same pool of want ads and had equivalent r?sum?s. Nine names were selected to represent each category: black women, white women, black men and white men. Last names common to the racial group were also assigned. Four r?sum?s were typically submitted for each job opening, drawn from a reservoir of 160. Nearly 5,000 applications were submitted from mid-2001 to mid-2002. Professors Bertrand and Mullainathan kept track of which candidates were invited for job interviews.
No single employer was sent two identical r?sum?s, and the names on the r?sum?s were randomly assigned, so applicants with black- and white-sounding names applied for the same set of jobs with the same set of r?sum?s.
Apart from their names, applicants had the same experience, education and skills, so employers had no reason to distinguish among them.
The results are disturbing. Applicants with white-sounding names were 50 percent more likely to be called for interviews than were those with black-sounding names. Interviews were requested for 10.1 percent of applicants with white-sounding names and only 6.7 percent of those with black-sounding names.
Within racial groups, applications with men's or women's names were equally likely to result in calls for interviews, providing little evidence of discrimination based on sex in these entry-level jobs.
There were significant differences in interview-request rates among the nine names associated with black women, but not among the names within each of the other groups.
At the low end, the interview-request rate was 2.2 percent for Aisha, 3.8 percent for Keisha and 5.4 percent for Tamika, compared with 9.1 percent for Kenya and Latonya and 10.5 percent for Ebony.
Only part of this variability reflects chance differences resulting from sampling, although the authors have not been able to find a good explanation for the wide range. Thus it is important that the names chosen for black women were not uncommon; they represent 7.1 percent of all names listed on Massachusetts birth certificates for black girls from 1974 to 1979.
The 50 percent advantage in interview requests for white-sounding names held in both Boston and Chicago, and for both men and women.
This discrepancy complements findings from earlier studies in which researchers sent a small number of matched black and white "auditors" to apply for jobs in person. Typically, though not always, the black job seekers were less likely to be invited for an interview or offered a job.
December 12, 2002
What's in a Name? Perhaps Plenty if You're a Job Seeker
By ALAN B. KRUEGER
WHAT'S in a name? Evidently plenty if you are looking for a job.
To test whether employers discriminate against black job applicants, Marianne Bertrand of the University of Chicago and Sendhil Mullainathan of M.I.T. conducted an unusual experiment. They selected 1,300 help-wanted ads from newspapers in Boston and Chicago and submitted multiple r?sum?s from phantom job seekers. The researchers randomly assigned the first names on the r?sum?s, choosing from one set that is particularly common among blacks and from another that is common among whites.
So Kristen and Tamika, and Brad and Tyrone, applied for jobs from the same pool of want ads and had equivalent r?sum?s. Nine names were selected to represent each category: black women, white women, black men and white men. Last names common to the racial group were also assigned. Four r?sum?s were typically submitted for each job opening, drawn from a reservoir of 160. Nearly 5,000 applications were submitted from mid-2001 to mid-2002. Professors Bertrand and Mullainathan kept track of which candidates were invited for job interviews.
No single employer was sent two identical r?sum?s, and the names on the r?sum?s were randomly assigned, so applicants with black- and white-sounding names applied for the same set of jobs with the same set of r?sum?s.
Apart from their names, applicants had the same experience, education and skills, so employers had no reason to distinguish among them.
The results are disturbing. Applicants with white-sounding names were 50 percent more likely to be called for interviews than were those with black-sounding names. Interviews were requested for 10.1 percent of applicants with white-sounding names and only 6.7 percent of those with black-sounding names.
Within racial groups, applications with men's or women's names were equally likely to result in calls for interviews, providing little evidence of discrimination based on sex in these entry-level jobs.
There were significant differences in interview-request rates among the nine names associated with black women, but not among the names within each of the other groups.
At the low end, the interview-request rate was 2.2 percent for Aisha, 3.8 percent for Keisha and 5.4 percent for Tamika, compared with 9.1 percent for Kenya and Latonya and 10.5 percent for Ebony.
Only part of this variability reflects chance differences resulting from sampling, although the authors have not been able to find a good explanation for the wide range. Thus it is important that the names chosen for black women were not uncommon; they represent 7.1 percent of all names listed on Massachusetts birth certificates for black girls from 1974 to 1979.
The 50 percent advantage in interview requests for white-sounding names held in both Boston and Chicago, and for both men and women.
This discrepancy complements findings from earlier studies in which researchers sent a small number of matched black and white "auditors" to apply for jobs in person. Typically, though not always, the black job seekers were less likely to be invited for an interview or offered a job.
