Department of Sociology, Utrecht University, Padualaan 14, 3584, CH Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Netherlands Institute for Social Research, The Hague, the Netherlands; Department of Interdisciplinary Social Science, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Soc Sci Res. 2021 Jan;93:102482. doi: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2020.102482. Epub 2020 Oct 8.
While statistical discrimination theory is often proposed as an important explanation for ethnic discrimination in hiring, research that empirically scrutinizes its underlying assumptions is scant. To test these assumptions, we combine data from a cross-national field experiment with secondary data indicative of the average labor productivity of ethnic communities. We find little evidence that adding diagnostic personal information reduces discrimination against ethnic minorities. Furthermore, we do not find an association between language similarity or the socioeconomic resources of the ethnic community and hiring discrimination. However, our findings show that discrimination is related to the socioeconomic development of the country of ancestry. Finally, the impact of these indicators of group productivity is generally not moderated by the amount of diagnostic personal information. Taken together, these findings question several core assumptions of statistical discrimination theory.
虽然统计歧视理论常被提出作为雇佣中种族歧视的一个重要解释，但实证检验其基本假设的研究却很少。为了检验这些假设，我们结合了跨国实地实验的数据和表明族群平均劳动生产率的辅助数据。我们发现几乎没有证据表明增加诊断性个人信息会减少对少数民族的歧视。此外，我们没有发现语言相似性或族群的社会经济资源与雇佣歧视之间存在关联。然而，我们的研究结果表明，歧视与原籍国的社会经济发展有关。最后，这些群体生产力指标的影响通常不受诊断性个人信息数量的调节。总之，这些发现对统计歧视理论的几个核心假设提出了质疑。
