Baert Stijn, De Visschere Sarah, Schoors Koen, Vandenberghe Désirée, Omey Eddy
Sherppa-Study Hive for Economic Research and Public Policy Analysis, Ghent University, Sint-Pietersplein 6, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium; Research Foundation - Flanders, Egmontstraat 5, B-1000 Brussels, Belgium; Department of Sociology, University of Antwerp, Sint-Jacobsstraat 2, B-2000 Antwerp, Belgium; IRES-Institut de Recherches Économiques et Sociales, Université catholique de Louvain, 3 Place Montesquieu, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium; IZA-Institute for the Study of Labor, Schaumburg-Lippe-Straße 5-9, D-53113 Bonn, Germany.
Sherppa-Study Hive for Economic Research and Public Policy Analysis, Ghent University, Sint-Pietersplein 6, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium.
Soc Sci Med. 2016 Dec;170:247-254. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.06.033. Epub 2016 Jun 23.
Each year a substantial share of the European population suffers from major depression. This mental illness may affect individuals' later life outcomes indirectly by the stigma it inflicts. The present study assesses hiring discrimination based on disclosed depression. To this end, between May 2015 and July 2015, we sent out 288 trios of job applications from fictitious candidates to real vacancies in Belgium. Within each trio, one candidate claimed to have become unemployed only recently, whereas the other two candidates revealed former depression or no reason at all for their unemployment during a full year. Disclosing a year of inactivity due to former depression decreases the probability of getting a job interview invitation by about 34% when compared with candidates who just became unemployed, but the stigma effect of a year of depression is not significantly higher than the stigma effect of a year of unexplained unemployment. In addition, we found that these stigmas of depression and unemployment were driven by our male trios of fictitious candidates. As a consequence, our results are in favour of further research on gender heterogeneity in the stigma of depression and other health impairments.
每年，相当一部分欧洲人口患有重度抑郁症。这种精神疾病可能会因其带来的污名间接影响个人的晚年生活。本研究评估基于已披露抑郁症的招聘歧视情况。为此，在2015年5月至2015年7月期间，我们向比利时的实际职位空缺发送了288组来自虚构候选人的求职申请。在每组申请中，一名候选人声称最近才失业，而另外两名候选人则透露曾患抑郁症或在一整年中没有失业原因。与刚失业的候选人相比，因曾患抑郁症而披露一年无工作经历会使获得求职面试邀请的概率降低约34%，但一年抑郁症的污名效应并不显著高于一年不明原因失业的污名效应。此外，我们发现这些抑郁症和失业的污名是由我们的男性虚构候选人组导致的。因此，我们的研究结果支持进一步研究抑郁症和其他健康损伤污名中的性别异质性。
