Beauty and job accessibility: new evidence from a field experiment

Weiguang Deng (), Dayang Li () and Dong Zhou ()
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Weiguang Deng: Hunan University
Dayang Li: University of California
Dong Zhou: Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Journal of Population Economics, 2020, vol. 33, issue 4, No 5, 1303-1341

Abstract: Abstract This study uses a field experiment to resolve the difficulties of quantifying personal appearance and identify a direct causal relationship between appearance and employment in China. The experiment reveals that taste-based pure appearance discrimination exists at the pre-interview stage. There are significant gender-specific heterogeneous effects of education on appearance discrimination: having better educational credentials reduces appearance discrimination among men but not among women. Moreover, attributes of the labor market, companies, and vacancies matter. Beauty premiums are larger in big cities with higher concentrations of women and in male-focused research positions. Similarly, the beauty premium is larger for vacancies with higher remuneration.

Keywords: Appearance discrimination; Beauty premium; Pre-interview stage; Field experiment; C93; I21; J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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DOI: 10.1007/s00148-019-00744-7

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