Racial Discrimination: Expanded
Continuing on an earlier post, here is the data about the first names used, their prevalence in the specific group (black/white male/female) and the percentage who received calls for interviews in the study:
| White-Sounding | Black-sounding | ||||
| Name | Frequency | Mean Call-back | Name | Frequency | Mean Call-back |
| Females | |||||
| Emily | 4.7% | 8.3% | Aisha | 3.6% | 2.2% |
| Anne | 5.0% | 9.0% | Keisha | 3.7% | 3.8% |
| Jill | 4.2% | 9.3% | Tamika | 5.3% | 5.4% |
| Allison | 4.7% | 9.4% | Lakisha | 4.1% | 5.5% |
| Sarah | 3.9% | 9.8% | Tanisha | 4.2% | 6.3% |
| Meredith | 3.9% | 10.6% | Latoya | 4.6% | 8.8% |
| Laurie | 4.0% | 10.8% | Kenya | 4.0% | 9.1% |
| Carrie | 3.5% | 13.1% | Latonya | 4.7% | 9.1% |
| Kristen | 4.4% | 13.6% | Ebony | 4.3% | 10.5% |
| Males | |||||
| Neil | 1.6% | 6.6% | Rasheed | 1.4% | 3.0% |
| Geoffrey | 1.2% | 6.8% | Tremayne | 1.4% | 4.3% |
| Brett | 1.2% | 6.8% | Kareem | 1.3% | 4.7% |
| Brendan | 1.3% | 7.7% | Darnell | 0.9% | 4.8% |
| Greg | 1.0% | 7.8% | Tyrone | 1.6% | 5.3% |
| Todd | 1.4% | 8.7% | Jamal | 1.2% | 6.6% |
| Matthew | 1.4% | 9.0% | Hakim | 1.1% | 7.3% |
| Jay | 1.4% | 13.2% | Leroy | 1.3% | 9.4% |
| Brad | 1.3% | 15.9% | Jermaine | 1.1% | 11.3% |
I have a few more excerpts and thoughts on this, but right now I have to go for dinner with a friend.
To be continued.
NOTE: All the tables and quotes belong to Bertrand and Mullainathan and are from their paper “Are Emily and Brendan More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination.” All copyrights belong to the authors or to the publisher of their paper.
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Categories: Civil Liberties
Interesting. I tend to think of Aisha as a “classy” name – and all other things being equal, I’d probably call back an Allison before a Kristen. I wonder how much of the discrepancy can simply be explained by employers thinking that certain names sound nicer than others.
bad
Racial Discrimination: Post 3
Looking at the data for the different names from the previous post, a few things come to mind. There is a great variation even within a category. What is the reason for that? Do people like Kristen so much better…