TY - UNPB
T1 - Discrimination in Hiring Based on Potential and Realized Fertility: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment
AU - Becker, Sascha O.
AU - Fernandes, Ana
AU - Weichselbaumer, Doris
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank the Editor, Eric Maurin, and two anonymous referees, as well as seminar participants at the University of Stirling, the University of Grenoble, the Delhi Indian Statistical Institute, the University of Fribourg, the University of Linz, the Bergen-Stavanger Workshop, the BFH International Conference on Discrimination in the Labor Market, the Annual Congress of the Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, the Annual Congress of the European Economic Association, and the Annual Congress of the European Association of Labour Economists for insightful comments. We thank Annina Berger, Yashar Blouri, Andreas Ferrara, Patrick Freyer, Christiane Koncilja, Juliane Ransmayr, Sylvia Sadzinski and Alexander Seiler for excellent research assistance. We thank David Neumark for sharing his code on the implementation of Neumark (2012) with us. Financial support by the Swiss National Science Foundation (project no. 100018_140563) and by the ESRC Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (grant no. ES/L011719/1) are very gratefully acknowledged. Ethical approval was obtained via Warwick's Humanities and Social Sciences Research Ethics Committee (45/10-11) on 9 July 2011.
Funding Information:
We thank the Editor, Eric Maurin, and two anonymous referees, as well as seminar participants at the University of Stirling, the University of Grenoble, the Delhi Indian Statistical Institute, the University of Fribourg, the University of Linz, the Bergen-Stavanger Workshop, the BFH International Conference on Discrimination in the Labor Market, the Annual Congress of the Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, the Annual Congress of the European Economic Association, and the Annual Congress of the European Association of Labour Economists for insightful comments. We thank Annina Berger, Yashar Blouri, Andreas Ferrara, Patrick Freyer, Christiane Koncilja, Juliane Ransmayr, Sylvia Sadzinski and Alexander Seiler for excellent research assistance. We thank David Neumark for sharing his code on the implementation of Neumark (2012) with us. Financial support by the Swiss National Science Foundation (project no. 100018_140563) and by the ESRC Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (grant no. ES/L011719/1) are very gratefully acknowledged. Ethical approval was obtained via Warwick's Humanities and Social Sciences Research Ethics Committee (45/10-11) on 9 July 2011.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 The Authors
PY - 2019/5/20
Y1 - 2019/5/20
N2 - Due to conventional gender norms, women are more likely to be in charge of childcare than men. From an employer’s perspective, in their fertile age they are also at “risk” of pregnancy. Both factors potentially affect hiring practices of firms. We conduct a large-scale correspondence test in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, sending out approx. 9,000 job applications, varying job candidate’s personal characteristics such as marital status and age of children. We find evidence that, for part-time jobs, married women with older kids, who likely finished their childbearing cycle and have more projectable childcare chores than women with very young kids, are at a significant advantage vis-à-vis other groups of women. At the same time, married, but childless applicants, who havea higher likelihood to become pregnant, are at a disadvantage compared to single, but childless applicants to part-time jobs. Such effects are not present for full-time jobs, presumably, because by applying to these in contrast to part-time jobs, women signal that they have arranged for external childcare.
AB - Due to conventional gender norms, women are more likely to be in charge of childcare than men. From an employer’s perspective, in their fertile age they are also at “risk” of pregnancy. Both factors potentially affect hiring practices of firms. We conduct a large-scale correspondence test in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, sending out approx. 9,000 job applications, varying job candidate’s personal characteristics such as marital status and age of children. We find evidence that, for part-time jobs, married women with older kids, who likely finished their childbearing cycle and have more projectable childcare chores than women with very young kids, are at a significant advantage vis-à-vis other groups of women. At the same time, married, but childless applicants, who havea higher likelihood to become pregnant, are at a disadvantage compared to single, but childless applicants to part-time jobs. Such effects are not present for full-time jobs, presumably, because by applying to these in contrast to part-time jobs, women signal that they have arranged for external childcare.
KW - fertility
KW - discrimination
KW - experimental economics
U2 - 10.26481/umagsb.2019015
DO - 10.26481/umagsb.2019015
M3 - Working paper
T3 - GSBE Research Memoranda
BT - Discrimination in Hiring Based on Potential and Realized Fertility: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment
PB - Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics
ER -