Post by Lex Hurley on Oct 7, 2016 17:30:48 GMT
Dr. Dennis mentioned this topic during the discussion following Unnatural Causes, however I felt it was definitely worth expanding upon here. I initially found out about this issue from an episode of Freakonomics detailing the importance of one's name where they mentioned this study and actually performed a smaller scale experiment with very similar results.
In 2004, Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan designed an experiment to test the effect of race in American labor markets solely based on the inferences employers and/or hirers have based off of applicants' names: They created four "template" resumes (two referred to as "higher quality" with greater job skills, lengths of employment, and fewer gaps in employment & two referred to as "lower quality" with the opposite characteristics) that would be randomly assigned wither "very White-sounding names (such as Emily Walsh or Greg Baker)" or "very African-American-sounding names (such as Lakisha Washington or Jamal Jones)"1 that would be sent off to help-wanted postings for a variety of positions across Chicago and Boston. For each posting (approximately 1,300 used), four resumes were sent out -- a high and low quality with a 'white' name & a high and low quality resume with a 'black' name -- and time until callback was monitored (approximately 5,000 resumes were sent in total).1
Results revealed that between both quality-types of resumes applicants with 'white' names got callbacks for 1 out of every 10 resumes sent while those with 'black' names got callbacks for 1 out of every 15 resumes sent -- a 50% gap that can only be accounted for differences in name as literally all other variables were controlled in the study. When comparing quality-adjusted differences between callbacks on resumes, it was found that 'white' names with higher-quality resumes received 30% more callbacks than 'whites' with low-quality resumes, while there was no significant difference in callbacks for those with 'black' names after adjusting for differences in resume quality.1
I could go on about this all day, however I'll instead recommend everyone give this study a cursory read-through as it is incredibly interesting and (I thought) very well executed.
1) Bertrand M, Mullainathan S. 2004. Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination. The American Economic Review. 94(4): 991-1013. Retrieved online Oct. 7, 2017 from links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8282%28200409%2994%3A4%3C991%3AAEAGME%3E2.0.CO%3B2-H.
In 2004, Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan designed an experiment to test the effect of race in American labor markets solely based on the inferences employers and/or hirers have based off of applicants' names: They created four "template" resumes (two referred to as "higher quality" with greater job skills, lengths of employment, and fewer gaps in employment & two referred to as "lower quality" with the opposite characteristics) that would be randomly assigned wither "very White-sounding names (such as Emily Walsh or Greg Baker)" or "very African-American-sounding names (such as Lakisha Washington or Jamal Jones)"1 that would be sent off to help-wanted postings for a variety of positions across Chicago and Boston. For each posting (approximately 1,300 used), four resumes were sent out -- a high and low quality with a 'white' name & a high and low quality resume with a 'black' name -- and time until callback was monitored (approximately 5,000 resumes were sent in total).1
Results revealed that between both quality-types of resumes applicants with 'white' names got callbacks for 1 out of every 10 resumes sent while those with 'black' names got callbacks for 1 out of every 15 resumes sent -- a 50% gap that can only be accounted for differences in name as literally all other variables were controlled in the study. When comparing quality-adjusted differences between callbacks on resumes, it was found that 'white' names with higher-quality resumes received 30% more callbacks than 'whites' with low-quality resumes, while there was no significant difference in callbacks for those with 'black' names after adjusting for differences in resume quality.1
I could go on about this all day, however I'll instead recommend everyone give this study a cursory read-through as it is incredibly interesting and (I thought) very well executed.
1) Bertrand M, Mullainathan S. 2004. Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination. The American Economic Review. 94(4): 991-1013. Retrieved online Oct. 7, 2017 from links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8282%28200409%2994%3A4%3C991%3AAEAGME%3E2.0.CO%3B2-H.