EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Discrimination in Hiring Based on Potential and Realized Fertility: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment

Sascha Becker, Ana Fernandes and Doris Weichselbaumer

No 2019-10, Economics working papers from Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria

Abstract: Due to conventional gender norms, women are more likely to be in charge of childcare than men. From an employer’s perspective, in their fertile age they are also at “risk” of pregnancy. Both factors potentially affect hiring practices of firms. We conduct a largescale correspondence test in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, sending out approx. 9,000 job applications, varying job candidate’s personal characteristics such as marital status and age of children. We find evidence that, for part-time jobs, married women with older kids, who likely finished their childbearing cycle and have more projectable childcare chores than women with very young kids, are at a significant advantage vis-àvis other groups of women. At the same time, married, but childless applicants, who have a higher likelihood to become pregnant, are at a disadvantage compared to single, but childless applicants to part-time jobs. Such effects are not present for full-time jobs, presumably, because by applying to these in contrast to part-time jobs, women signal that they have arranged for external childcare.

Keywords: Fertility; Discrimination; Experimental economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 J16 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-exp, nep-hrm, nep-lab and nep-ltv
Note: English
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econ.jku.at/papers/2019/wp1910.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Discrimination in hiring based on potential and realized fertility: Evidence from a large-scale field experiment (2019) Downloads
Working Paper: Discrimination in hiring based on potential and realized fertility: evidence from a large-scale field experiment (2019) Downloads
Working Paper: Discrimination in Hiring Based on Potential and Realized Fertility: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment (2019) Downloads
Working Paper: Discrimination in Hiring Based on Potential and Realized Fertility: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment (2019) Downloads
Working Paper: Discrimination in Hiring Based on Potential and Realized Fertility: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment (2019) Downloads
Working Paper: Discrimination in Hiring Based on Potential and Realized Fertility: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment (2019) Downloads
Working Paper: Discrimination in Hiring Based on Potential and Realized Fertility: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment (2019) Downloads
Working Paper: Discrimination in hiring based on potential and realized fertility: Evidence from a large-scale field experiment (2019) Downloads
Working Paper: Discrimination in Hiring Based on Potential and Realized Fertility: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment (2019) Downloads
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:jku:econwp:2019_10

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics working papers from Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by René Böheim ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-31
Handle: RePEc:jku:econwp:2019_10