Does Race Affect Access to Government Services? An Experiment Exploring Street‐Level Bureaucrats and Access to Public Housing

Einstein, Katherine Levine; Glick, David

doi:10.1111/ajps.12252

Cited by 169 publications

(136 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…With few exceptions, correspondence audits regularly find lower phone and/or email response rates for applications with black names compared to white names in both employment and housing (Gaddis 2015;Hanson et al 2016;Hogan and Berry 2011). Researchers have continued to find evidence of racial discrimination even as correspondence audits have expanded to include a broader domain of actors, such as politicians, prospective roommates, public officials, and health care professionals (Butler and Broockman 2011;Einstein and Glick 2017;Gaddis and Ghoshal 2017;Giulietti, Tonin, and Vlassopoulos 2015;Sharma, Mitra, and Stano 2015).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

How Black Are Lakisha and Jamal? Racial Perceptions from Names Used in Correspondence Audit Studies

Gaddis¹

2017

SocScience

224

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Abstract:Online correspondence audit studies have emerged as the primary method to examine racial discrimination. Although audits use distinctive names to signal race, few studies scientifically examine data regarding the perception of race from names. Different names treated as black or white may be perceived in heterogeneous ways. I conduct a survey experiment that asks respondents to identify the race they associate with a series of names. I alter the first names given to each respondent and inclusion of last names. Names more commonly given by highly educated black mothers (e.g., Jalen and Nia) are less likely to be perceived as black than names given by less educated black mothers (e.g., DaShawn and Tanisha). The results suggest that a large body of social science evidence on racial discrimination operates under a misguided assumption that all black names are alike, and the findings from correspondence audits are likely sensitive to name selection.

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confidence: 99%

How Black Are Lakisha and Jamal? Racial Perceptions from Names Used in Correspondence Audit Studies

Gaddis¹

2017

SocScience

224

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“…Our research suggests that not only do public officials discriminate on the basis of race/ethnicity (Adida, Laitin, and Valfort 2010;Butler and Broockman 2011;Einstein and Glick 2017) -the most commonly used treatment in audit studies of public officials (Costa 2017) -they also do so against minority religious groups such as Muslims and atheists. Even though religion is a legally protected category, these groups still face substantial hurdles as they seek to gain access to basic public services.…”

Section: Medium [Compatibility Inquiry] High [Accommodation Requesmentioning

confidence: 82%

“…5 This feature allows us to make very precise inferences as well as use an experimental design that enables us to unpack the treatment effects that we observe. In broad strokes, whereas many audit studies focus on elected officials, ours focuses on street level bureaucrats, a group that has received much less attention in the literature (Einstein and Glick 2017;Hemker and Rink 2017) and that may behave differently than elected officials given the relative lack of electoral pressures (Dropp and Peskowitz 2012). Our results suggest that Muslims and atheists face substantially higher hurdles in obtaining public services and that these effects are at least partially driven by a perception that intense beliefs about religion impose a cost or burden on public officials that they would rather avoid.…”

Section: Medium [Compatibility Inquiry] High [Accommodation Requesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, studies involving both elected and appointed public officials primarily focus on partisan and racial discrimination (e.g., Einstein and Glick 2017;White, Nathan, and Faller 2015). To our knowledge, no experimental research exists on religious biases in either elected or appointed public officials such as American public school principals (our population of interest).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Does religious bias shape access to public services? A large-scale audit experiment among street-level bureaucrats

Pfaff¹,

Crabtree²,

Kern³

et al. 2018

Preprint

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Despite growing descriptive evidence of discrimination against minority religious groups and atheists in the United States, little experimental work exists studying whether individuals face differential barriers to receiving public services depending on their religious affiliation. Here we report results from a large-scale audit study of street-level bureaucrats in the American public school system. We emailed the principals of more than 45,000 public schools and asked for a meeting, randomly assigning the religious affiliation/non-affiliation of the family. To get at potential mechanisms, we also randomly assigned belief intensity.We find evidence of substantial discrimination against Muslims and atheists. These individuals are substantially less likely to receive a response, with discrimination growing when they signal that their beliefs are more intense. Protestants and Catholics face no discrimination unless they signal that their religious beliefs are intense. Our ?findings suggest that minority religious groups and atheists face important barriers to equal representation in the public arena.

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“…Researchers have continued to find evidence of racial discrimination even as correspondence audits have expanded to include a broader domain of actors, such as politicians, prospective roommates, public officials, and health care professionals (Butler and Broockman 2011;Einstein and Glick 2017;Gaddis and Ghoshal 2017;Giulietti, Tonin, and Vlassopoulos 2015;Sharma, Mitra, and Stano 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Black Are Lakisha and Jamal? Racial Perceptions from Names Used in Correspondence Audit Studies

Gaddis

2017

SSRN Journal

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Online correspondence audit studies have emerged as the primary method to examine racial discrimination. Although audits use distinctive names to signal race, few studies scientifically examine data regarding the perception of race from names. Different names treated as black or white may be perceived in heterogeneous ways. I conduct a survey experiment that asks respondents to identify the race they associate with a series of names. I alter the first names given to each respondent and inclusion of last names. Names more commonly given by highly educated black mothers (e.g., Jalen and Nia) are less likely to be perceived as black than names given by less educated black mothers (e.g., DaShawn and Tanisha). The results suggest that a large body of social science evidence on racial discrimination operates under a misguided assumption that all black names are alike and the findings from correspondence audits are likely sensitive to name selection.

show abstract

Does Race Affect Access to Government Services? An Experiment Exploring Street‐Level Bureaucrats and Access to Public Housing

Cited by 169 publications

References 45 publications

How Black Are Lakisha and Jamal? Racial Perceptions from Names Used in Correspondence Audit Studies

How Black Are Lakisha and Jamal? Racial Perceptions from Names Used in Correspondence Audit Studies

Does religious bias shape access to public services? A large-scale audit experiment among street-level bureaucrats

How Black Are Lakisha and Jamal? Racial Perceptions from Names Used in Correspondence Audit Studies

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