Researching racial equity: Racial discrimination, choice constraints, and policy implications
In J-PAL North America’s researching racial equity blog series, we discuss how research plays a critical role in identifying structural inequities in systems and policies that disproportionately affect communities of color. A team of researchers, including J-PAL affiliated professors Peter Christensen (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) and Christopher Timmins (Duke), are investigating the connections between racial discrimination in the housing market and environmental exposure risks. In part two, J-PAL staff interview Peter to discuss his ongoing series of evaluations, including a 2021 paper on housing discrimination, and the role randomized evaluations can play in addressing racial inequities.
Can you describe the motivation behind your research on housing discrimination and how your research seeks to increase equity?
Our research questions are driven by the experiences of people who are most impacted by this work. Engaging in public forums that bring together local housing and fair housing enforcement agencies, researchers, and representatives has helped us understand what is happening on the ground so that we can create our research designs to better identify and study these issues.
We know that there are racial and economic disparities in pollution exposure that are often tied to the neighborhoods where people live—these have long been documented by the environmental justice field. Bringing disparities to light is an important first step, but in and of itself might not lead to actionable policy change. Our research is really focused on disentangling the underlying mechanisms—what’s causing people to live in residential areas with higher pollution? And we know that neighborhoods impact more than pollution exposure, so we’re also interested in understanding the array of amenities and disamenities (e.g., schools, jobs, transportation) available in different areas.
There is a lot of other important research that aims to capture why people choose to live in different neighborhoods. We’re looking at a slightly different question, which is what factors constrain housing choices. One key piece of this work is to look at persistent income inequality, which one could easily assume is driving disparities in pollution exposures, because, of course, budgets affect who can live in which neighborhoods.
However, we also wanted to see if racial discrimination further constrains the choices of households of color, even with the same budget constraints as white households. That discrimination piece—where some groups have more choice constraints than others—is a very different policy question with different policy implications.
What do you see as the main policy implications of this research?
From a policy perspective, it’s important to understand the cause of a problem in order to best address it. For instance, if systematic differences in income are the primary cause of these disparities, then policy solutions should focus on addressing income inequality—a critical and challenging policy agenda in and of itself. Addressing discrimination that imposes constraints on choices in less polluted neighborhoods, on the other hand, requires enforcement of fair housing legislation and coordinated efforts between the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Environmental Protection Agency. These policy efforts are different from those that focus specifically on income mobility and have received less attention in recent years. So that’s why we’re motivated to understand the underlying mechanisms behind these disparities in neighborhood and pollution exposure, and this initial randomized evaluation on housing discrimination allowed us to do that.
That’s a great transition to looking at the role of randomized evaluations. What is the value of using a randomized evaluation—in this study and more generally—to address racial inequity, particularly systemically?
First, as I mentioned, is the ability to identify the underlying mechanisms. By manipulating one factor of a rental inquiry, the inquirer’s perceived race, we can meaningfully disentangle racial discrimination from other potential causes of disparate response rates. Understanding mechanisms can lead to changes in policy, and quantifying the scope of that mechanism can help justify spending public dollars to address the issue.
Second, the results of randomized evaluations are transparent. They do not require the same assumptions as other quasi-experimental methods. It’s helpful to be able to say to supporters and skeptics alike that “this is what we observed in a large-scale experiment using a familiar search platform.”
Finally, on the systemic piece, if studies like ours can help us understand patterns of behavior, they can help us begin to understand what guardrails to put in place. This study demonstrated that discrimination is occurring—whether people are cognizant of it or not—on digital housing platforms. So now we can ask: how can we reduce discrimination in the same digital markets?
We also have a new paper coming soon that evaluates the causal effects of historic and contemporary segregation on choices and choice constraints today. In this paper, we’re calculating the dollar estimates of the damages caused by discrimination, which could have not only policy but also legal implications. These estimates are only possible to obtain with an experiment.
A lot of your work seems driven by the potential policy implications of the research. What steps has your team taken to share your findings?
As one example, I was asked to speak about this work with MSNBC. We’ve also participated in HUD’s public forums to share our methodologies, discuss the results, and better understand what’s happening on the ground. That’s another way that we can make sure our research is consistent with what’s happening on the ground and is informing various efforts.
In these and other dissemination efforts, we try to help people understand the mechanisms of discrimination and also to explain the scale and heterogeneity of the problem—that discrimination facing renters from certain groups is stronger in some locations than others. So even on the national stage, we think it’s important to identify where households of color are facing the greatest constraints and begin to understand why.
In addition to coverage in national publications, and given that rates of discrimination varied by location, has your research been picked up at the local level as well?
Our hope is that through our dissemination at major national news outlets, we can provide evidence to support local agencies and community leaders in these areas with higher levels of discrimination.
That said, I have been interviewed by local news stations where reports of housing discrimination have increased recently and am contacted by individuals asking how to interpret the results in their contexts. And while there are some limitations of what I can say about specific neighborhoods, I’ll explain how they can accurately interpret the results to, say, a local representative. So in that sense there’s dissemination happening at kind of an individual level.
I also get emails from people challenging the results, saying that they follow HUD guidelines and fair housing laws. Since our method yields transparent results, I just say “this is what we found.” I try to explain the results in ways that help people understand the methodology and share related research that helps illustrate the nuances of discrimination and that it can happen subconsciously. I hope there’s some learning that can happen through that. And it also takes us back to some of the benefits of randomized evaluations: the results are the results.
The researching racial equity blog series features the contributions of researchers and partners in examining and addressing racial inequities and offers resources and tools for further learning. Part one shares an example of evaluating racial discrimination in employment. Part three gives an overview of stratification economics in the context of evaluations. Part four discusses how to center lived experiences throughout the research process and in impact evaluations. Part five shares guidance for incorporating inclusive and asset-based framing throughout the research cycle. Part six examines sources of bias in administrative data bias. Lastly, in part seven, Damon Jones and J-PAL staff share progress on researching racial equity and future areas of work.
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In J-PAL North America’s researching racial equity blog series, we discuss how research plays a critical role in identifying structural inequities in systems and policies that disproportionately affect communities of color. In part one of this series, J-PAL staff interview Amanda Agan to discuss her 2018 evaluation of "Ban the Box" policies on employment outcomes, finding disparate impacts by race, and explore the role of randomized evaluations in advancing racial equity.
In J-PAL North America’s researching racial equity blog series, we discuss how research plays a critical role in identifying structural inequities in systems and policies that disproportionately affect communities of color. In part one, we interview Dr. Agan to discuss the evaluation and explore the role of randomized evaluations in advancing racial equity.
Can you tell us a bit about the “Ban the Box” study and the goals of this research?
Millions of people across the United States acquire criminal records each year, and these records can be a barrier to employment. Black men are overrepresented in all steps of the criminal-legal process from stops, to arrests, to charges, to convictions, and sentencing.
In an effort to increase opportunities for people with records, jurisdictions across the country have implemented “Ban the Box” (BTB), a set of policies restricting employers from asking about applicants’ criminal histories on job applications. These policies are often presented as a means of reducing unemployment among Black men. In our BTB study, we wanted to understand how employers reacted to job applicants from different demographic groups once the criminal record question was removed from the application. Would they start to rely on other observable characteristics as proxies for criminal justice contact? In particular, would they use perceived race to stereotype applicants?
To answer these questions, we sent out a total of 15,000 fictitious job applications both before and after BTB went into effect in New Jersey and New York City in 2015. On each application, we randomized 1) the perceived race of the applicant by using names associated with certain races, 2) whether the applicant had a criminal history, 3) whether the applicant had a GED or a high school diploma, and 4) whether the applicant had a one-year employment gap or not. Before BTB, there was little racial disparity in callback rates among applicants with similar records, though employers were 63 percent more likely to call an applicant with no record than one with a record. After BTB, however, when the employers could no longer ascertain criminal history from the job application, employers were 43 percent more likely to call back an applicant perceived to be white than one perceived to be Black. Employers were clearly stereotyping Black applicants as more likely to have a criminal record, harming Black applicants who did not have a criminal record. Interestingly, they did not seem to react differentially to applicants with one-year employment gaps or GEDs, even though those characteristics are also correlated with criminal records.
What steps did your team take to disseminate findings after results were finalized? Did the study result in any policy change that you know of?
We shared early versions of our findings with President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors when they approached us about potentially implementing a Federal BTB policy. We also spoke with several media outlets, including NPR and US News, to advertise the findings. In addition, we participated in an online policy debate on BTB hosted by the Urban Institute that featured several academics and policymakers.
I am not aware of any jurisdiction that repealed BTB laws due to this research. But, I do hope it has given policymakers pause as they look for policies that can help improve opportunities for individuals with records so that we do so in a way that does not inadvertently harm Black job seekers who do not have criminal records.
From your perspective, how did your BTB work address racial inequities?
BTB was meant to increase interviews and opportunities for people with records. We could have simply randomized criminal record status without disaggregating by race, and likely would have found, as we did, that BTB "worked" in reducing the impact of having a criminal record on employment opportunities. But given what we knew about the racial statistical discrimination and stereotyping that happens in employment and other domains, we decided to explore this aspect in our research as well, which uncovered a harm that we believe was important to document.
BTB policies appear to have exacerbated racial inequities in employer callback rates because employers held the stereotypical belief that a young, Black, male applicant was more likely to have a criminal record than a white applicant. The research implies that simply omitting information will not eliminate the negative labor impacts of criminal legal contact and may harm Black applicants without criminal histories.
What role can randomized evaluations play in promoting racial equity?
Randomized evaluations are really good at pinpointing the causal impact of a (manipulatable) characteristic, policy, or treatment on measurable outcomes. In certain instances, one can even try to pinpoint the direct impacts of race by manipulating perceived race as we did or as in a previous study by J-PAL affiliates Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan. By demonstrating that racism is, at least in part, driving disparate outcomes in certain fields (e.g., hiring), audit studies and other randomized evaluations have the potential to effect change by informing policy.
However, randomized evaluations that can manipulate perceived race are usually estimating the impacts of race while holding other variables constant. Systemic racial inequality means that there are many differences between Black applicants and white applicants besides their (perceived) race, some of which reflect the direct and indirect impacts of racial discrimination in other domains or at previous time periods. These complexities are harder to measure and address in a randomized evaluation. Integrating the results of randomized evaluations with other methods, both empirical and qualitative, as well as bringing in the voices of directly impacted community members and scholars, will likely give us the strongest path forward to improve policy and outcomes.
The researching racial equity blog series features the contributions of researchers and partners in examining and addressing racial inequities and offers resources and tools for further learning. Part two features work quantifying housing discrimination. Part three gives an overview of stratification economics in the context of evaluations. Part four discusses how to center lived experiences throughout the research process and in impact evaluations. Part five shares guidance for incorporating inclusive and asset-based framing throughout the research cycle. Part six examines sources of bias in administrative data bias. Lastly, in part seven, Damon Jones and J-PAL staff share progress on researching racial equity and future areas of work.
Racial housing discrimination is tied to residential segregation and inequitable economic opportunity. Researchers conducted a correspondence study assessing property managers’ responses to rental listing inquiries from prospective tenants with distinctively Black, Hispanic/Latinx, or white names in the United States. Property managers were significantly less likely to respond to messages from prospective Black or Hispanic/Latinx renters than white ones. The differences in response rates varied across cities, and anti-Black discrimination was associated with larger patterns of residential segregation and economic mobility.
Policy issue
In the United States, housing is a key factor in employment and educational opportunity, wealth accumulation, and economic mobility. Discriminatory policies that restrict access to housing on the basis of race have therefore stifled the opportunities and mobility available to many Black and Hispanic/Latinx people. Redlining, for example, created barriers to home ownership and divestment from Black-majority neighborhoods by demarcating properties in these communities as risky investments which were excluded from federally-insured mortgage programs. At the same time, racial covenants excluded people of color from moving into white neighborhoods. While the Fair Housing Act outlawed these practices in 1968, racial housing discrimination persists.
Historic discriminatory practices, coupled with current racial biases1, continue to restrict access to housing for renters and homebuyers of color and may contribute to short-term, long-term, and intergenerational inequality. One hypothesized source of contemporary racial housing discrimination is property manager bias, which influences if and how property managers respond to rental inquiries from prospective tenants. However, the extent of discriminatory behavior by landlords and property managers in the US rental market can be difficult to quantify.
Context of the evaluation
Many prospective renters use online housing platforms to find potential homes that have been listed by realtors or property managers. These platforms generally share contact information for the listing agent (the landlord or someone working on their behalf) or may provide a portal to contact the agent directly through the platform. Renters can then inquire about a property of interest. However, if the listing agent does not respond to a prospective tenant’s inquiry, that prospective tenant has no other avenues through which to access the property and is in effect prevented from renting, or even applying to rent, the home.
In the initial inquiry stage, often the only information property managers have access to is the inquirer’s name. Given historical and contemporary racial discrimination in housing access, researchers hypothesized that property managers would respond less often to inquirers they assumed to be Black and Hispanic/Latinx, based on their names, than those assumed to be white. To investigate, researchers conducted a correspondence study to quantify discriminatory behavior at this initial stage of the housing search process in the fifty largest rental markets in the United States.
Correspondence studies work by randomly altering characteristics of fictional applicants—for example, the name of the person inquiring about a property—and have previously been used to uncover racial discrimination in other fields, such as hiring.
Details of the intervention
Researchers conducted a large, nationwide correspondence study to examine racial discrimination by property managers in US housing rental markets. Researchers used Census data to identify the country’s fifty largest metropolitan housing markets and an online platform to identify listings and contact property managers in these markets.
The correspondence entailed using an automated system to contact property managers with fictional inquiries about their properties using names commonly associated with Black (e.g., Shanice), Hispanic/Latinx (e.g., Pedro), or white (e.g., Aubrey) people. Names were selected from sociology studies that have used surveys to identify the strength of racial associations people make to a variety of names drawn from 1994–2012 census data and birth records.2 These “prospective renters” then contacted 8,476 property managers by submitting a standard inquiry message through the online platform. Each property manager received three inquiries across three days, one each from a hypothetical renter with a distinctively Black, Hispanic/Latinx, or white name. Researchers randomized the order in which managers received messages from each name group. The study recorded the property managers’ response rates to 25,428 inquiries, exactly three per listed rental property.
Once a given property was rented, the researchers analyzed the racial/ethnic identities of the actual tenants to examine how property managers' responses to fictitious renters of different perceived races predicted actual housing outcomes. This step addressed a common limitation of correspondence studies: researchers typically do not observe the impact of the discriminatory behavior on actual outcomes.
Results and policy lessons
Property managers were less likely to respond to inquiries from prospective renters perceived to be Black and Hispanic/Latinx than those perceived to be white. Response rates to Black and Hispanic/Latinx inquirers were 5.6 and 2.8 percentage points lower than to white inquirers (9.3 percent and 4.6 percent lower, respectively, than the 60 percent response rate to white inquirers). There were no overall differences in response rate based on implied gender or maternal education level associated with the name.
Response differences by location
Gaps in response rates between Black-white and Hispanic/Latinx-white inquiries varied by location. For example, Black renters faced the greatest discrimination in Chicago, Illinois, where the response rate was 20.2 percentage points lower for Black inquirers than white ones (32 percent below the 63.5 percent response rate for white inquirers).3 The Hispanic/Latinx-white response gap was widest in Louisville, Kentucky, with property managers replying to Hispanic/Latinx inquirers 13.7 percentage points less than white inquirers (21 percent less than the 65 percent response rate for white inquirers).4 In some cities, Black renters faced significantly more discrimination than Hispanic/Latinx renters and vice versa, suggesting that racism and discrimination by property managers is targeted, rather than based in a general likelihood to discriminate.
Researchers also found correlations in many cities between property managers’ relative response rate to Black inquirers and measures of segregation and economic mobility, suggesting that Black renters face more constraints in cities with more segregated housing markets.
Correlation between response rates and tenant demographics
Researchers analyzed the demographic information of the tenants who ultimately rented the properties sampled in the experiment and found that 12 percent of the renters were Black, 11 percent were Hispanic/Latinx, 71 percent were white, and 6 percent were from other racial/ethnic groups. When comparing eventual renter demographics to rental inquiry response rates, researchers found that non-response to a prospective Black or Hispanic/Latinx renter corresponded to a 17.3 percent reduction in the probability that the subsequent tenant was Black or Hispanic/Latinx.
These results illustrate that, despite efforts to promote fair housing practices, renters of color face racial discrimination when searching for rental properties in most US markets. Given the central role housing access plays in economic mobility and opportunity, addressing the ongoing inequities of the rental housing market is an important policy priority.
Christensen, Peter, Ignacio Sarmiento-Barbieri, and Christopher Timmins. Racial Discrimination and Housing Outcomes in the United States Rental Market. No. w29516. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2021.
Turner, Margery Austin, Rob Santos, Diane K. Levy, Doug Wissoker, Claudia Aranda, and Rob Pitingolo. 2013. “Housing Discrimination against Racial and Ethnic Minorities 2012.” Washington, DC: US Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research.
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/Publications/pdf/HUD-514_HDS2012.pdf
See, for example, Gaddis, S. Michael. "Racial/ethnic perceptions from Hispanic names: Selecting names to test for discrimination." Socius 3 (2017): 2378023117737193. doi: 10.1177/2378023117737193 and Gaddis, S. Michael. "How black are Lakisha and Jamal? Racial perceptions from names used in correspondence audit studies." Sociological Science 4 (2017): 469-489. doi: 10.15195/v4.a19
The figures reported were provided by the authors via email correspondence in November 2022.
As above, the figures reported were provided by the authors via email correspondence in November 2022.
Marcella Alsan, economist, physician, and Co-Chair of J-PAL’s US Health Care Delivery Initiative, was recently selected as a recipient of a 2021 MacArthur Fellowship, in recognition of her work “investigating the role that legacies of discrimination and resulting mistrust play in perpetuating racial disparities in health."
Marcella Alsan is an economist, physician, and professor of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School. She is also the co-chair of J-PAL North America’s US Health Care Delivery Initiative. She was recently awarded a 2021 MacArthur Fellowship, "a no-strings-attached grant for individuals who have shown exceptional creativity in their work and the promise to do more."
How did you learn you had won the MacArthur grant? What was your immediate reaction?
I learned about the MacArthur grant through Cecilia Conrad, an economist who heads up the MacArthur fellows as well as other initiatives at the foundation. She actually wrote to me saying she wanted to chat about racial equity and maternal health, and I thought: great, that’s important. In her signature, it says MacArthur Fellows and 100&Change, but nothing but thoughts on maternal health and racial equity crossed my mind. We set up a time to meet and I thought we were all set, but then she reached out to me again to see if we could chat one-on-one before the meeting. I was literally in the car waiting for my daughter to come out from her first day of school when we connected. She said, “I actually wanted to let you know we are awarding you a MacArthur Fellowship.” I couldn't believe it. It was shocking and exciting all at the same time.
We’ve heard you are only allowed to tell one person about the award until the official announcement. Who did you choose to tell, and how hard was it to keep it a secret from everyone else?
The person who was in the car with me at the time was my husband, so he heard my discussion with Cecilia. His eyes were popping! So, he was the default person to learn about it. He definitely would have been the person that I chose anyway. He's a physician and didn’t know as much about this award. As he searched on his phone to learn more, he was like, "Wow, wow, wow." We were both pretty incredulous, and then we had to put on our poker faces because the kids were coming into the car and I had to jump on another call.
What was the day of the announcement like for you?
The day of the announcement was a blur. I happened to have a very busy teaching schedule, so I was just doing my regular prep and meetings, including meeting with a guest lecturer earlier that morning. Then I received an email from Heidi Williams, a colleague from Stanford University, seconds after the announcement that was all exclamation points and I thought, “Okay, people know now!” What was incredible to me was how many people congratulated me. It was heartwarming to see so many economists and physicians reaching out, including people I didn't realize even knew of me or my work, and many people whom I have admired for years. I also heard from my alma maters and former employers, including Loyola University, Harvard University, Stanford University, the Infectious Disease Society of America, and the NBER DAE leadership. My Dean at the Kennedy School put a very nice event together that day for me as well. We all raised a glass together with our masks on, and that was really memorable.
The MacArthur Foundation specifically highlighted your work exploring racial disparities in health outcomes and healthcare usage. Through a J-PAL-funded study, you found that racial concordance between patients and physicians has a positive effect on the take-up of preventive services by Black men. What drives you to work on these issues, and what changes in policy and practice do you hope studies such as these will spur?
The funding was not coming from any other place to do the Oakland study, so it was pivotal to receive that support from J-PAL North America. My preferences have been pretty consistent over time. I really care about the health of people who have fewer resources. I think that health is just so important. It's different than other commodities—it’s fundamental to wellbeing and opportunity. To be healthy is to have opportunity. This has always been my interest, and it's evolved over time from focusing on direct first line provision of care to thinking about it more from a macro level. But the underlying interest has always been the same, the research agenda has always been the same. It's just looking at different ways to try and understand and improve things.
Are there any new projects or issues that you’re eager to explore now that you have a flexible source of funding?
I think this project will help me take on additional risks and do research without strings attached. It’s hugely helpful. I am starting a Health Inequality Lab at the Harvard Kennedy School. I’m very excited to be working on models of structural racism and health care with Damon Jones and Crystal Yang and trying to improve the health in correctional facilities with Crystal. A lot of this work has been co-funded with J-PAL, and I remain so grateful for that support.