Discrimination and Administrative Burden in Public Service Markets: Does a Public–Private Difference Exist?

Abstract

Public services are often provided in markets where both public and private providers operate. Irrespective of ownership status, public services ought to be accessible regardless of clients' race, gender, ethnicity, or age. However, as theories of statistical discrimination and cream skimming suggest, market-based incentives may lead service providers to focus on non-minority clients because they perceive them as easier-to-serve and therefore less costly. This may lead to discrimination and hence jeopardizes equal access. In this study, we ask whether private, for-profit providers are more likely to discriminate on ethnic grounds compared to publicly owned providers. We implement a field experiment within the Flemish elderly care market by sending out email requests with either a Flemish or a Maghrebian name to all public and privately owned nursing homes. For overall response rates, no statistically significant differences between senders were found. However, we do find that privately owned facilities are about 20 percentage points less likely to provide information on how to enroll when the request is send from a Maghrebian name alias, and blinded coders perceive the information sent to the Maghrebian alias as less comprehensive. In publicly owned facilities, no such differences exist. We conclude that a public-private difference does exist, but that the mechanism of discrimination is subtler than expected. Rather than directly refusing to respond, nursing homes increase administrative burdens and learning costs for minority applicants.

Bureaucratic Responsiveness to LGBT Americans

“…Our sample size is comparable to or exceeds other recent audit studies that find evidence of bias and heterogeneous treatment effects (e.g., Butler and Broockman ; Carnes and Holbein ; Einstein and Glick ; Jilke, Van Dooren, and Rys ; White, Nathan, and Faller ). However, since our results suggest no bias, it is important to contextualize the magnitude of these effects and the power of the design.…”

“…We find some evidence that officials were less responsive to gay men relative to lesbian couples; however, this effect is largely driven by the fact that officials were systemically less responsive to male email senders, regardless of partner. Our results are consistent with emerging evidence in some areas of public policy that public officials concerned primarily with service provision exhibit less evidence of bias when dealing with putative citizens (e.g., Einstein and Glick ; Jilke, Van Dooren, and Rys ; Porter and Rogowski ). More broadly, our evidence does not suggest that localized anecdotes of discrimination are systematically representative.…”

Reducing Minority Discrimination at the Front Line—Combined Survey and Field Experimental Evidence

“…2 Studies of discrimination by street-level bureaucrats based on name cues outside the United States show more mixed results. For instance, Jilke, Van Dooren, and Rys (2018) find no discrimination by public officials in elder care centers in Flanders. Similarly, Grohe, Adam, and Knill (2016) find no systematic discrimination based on ethnicity in German local government.…”

“…They interpret this as evidence of statistical discrimination since the difference disappears when more specific information (other than the applicant's ethnicity) is available (Kaas and Manger 2011). As noted by Jilke, Van Dooren, and Rys (2018), statistical discrimination in public service is a form of cream skimming or cropping-that is, prioritizing the citizens who are easy to serve and avoiding the citizens least likely to succeed. From this perspective, we deduce that bureaucrats will evaluate new clients in terms of how it affects their own workload.…”

Does Good Performance Reduce Bad Behavior? Antecedents of Ethnic Employment Discrimination in Public Organizations

“…Equality of treatment in the public sector has been described as fundamental to American notions of democracy (Gooden 2015) and a key feature of modern bureaucracy (Weber ; Lipsky ). A recent and growing literature studies whether citizens experience equal treatment or discrimination, particularly based on ethnicity or race (Grohs, Adam, and Knill ; Jilke, Van Dooren, and Rys ; Pedersen, Stritch, and Thuesen ). The extent to which public organizations engage in discrimination varies across studies.…”