Weight, Attractiveness, and Gender When Hiring: A Field Experiment in Spain

Catarina Goulão (), Juan A. Lacomba (), Francisco Lagos and Dan-Olof Rooth
Additional contact information
Catarina Goulão: Toulouse School of Economics
Juan A. Lacomba: Universidad de Granada

No 16119, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Being overweight or obese is associated with lower employment and earnings, possibly arising from employer discrimination. A few studies have used field experiments to show that obese job applicants are, in fact, discriminated against in the hiring process. However, whether overweight job applicants also face employer discrimination is still an open question. To this end, we have designed a correspondence testing experiment in which fictitious applications are sent to real job openings across twelve different occupations in the Spanish labor market. We compare the callback rate for applications with a facial photo of a normal weight person to the one for applications with a photo of the same person manipulated into looking overweight. Applications with a photo of the weight-manipulated male receive significantly fewer callbacks for a job interview compared to normal weight, and this differential treatment is especially pronounced in female-dominated occupations. For women, we find the opposite result. Weight-manipulated female applications receive slightly more callbacks, especially in female-dominated occupations. Our experimental design allows us to disentangle whether employers act on attractiveness or weight when hiring. For men, the weight manipulation effect is explained by an attractiveness premium, while for women we find evidence of an attractiveness penalty, as well as a weight penalty, in explaining the effect.

Keywords: attractiveness; gender; overweight; obesity; hiring; correspondence testing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J64 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2023-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-lma and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published - published in: Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2024, 218, 132-145

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp16119.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Weight, attractiveness, and gender when hiring: A field experiment in Spain (2024)
Working Paper: Weight, attractiveness, and gender when hiring: A field experiment in Spain (2024)
Working Paper: Weight, Attractiveness, and Gender when Hiring. A Field Experiment in Spain (2023)
Working Paper: Weight, Attractiveness, and Gender when Hiring: a Field Experiment in Spain (2023)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16119

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().