An Experimental Study About Labor Market Discrimination: Gender, Social Class And Neighborhood

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to study the Chilean labor market and determine the presence or absence of gender discrimination. In order to break past the limitations of earlier works, an experimental design is used, the first of its kind in Chile. This study also allows socioeconomic discrimination associated to names and places of residence in the Chilean labor market to be tackled. The study consists of sending fictitious Curriculum Vitae for real job vacancies published weekly in the “El Mercurio” newspaper of Santiago. A range of strictly equivalent CVs in terms of qualifications and employment experience of applicants are sent out, only varying in gender, name and surname, and place of residence. The study allows differences in call response rates to be measured for the various demographic groups. Results are obtained for more than 11,000 CVs sent. Our results show no significant differences in callback rates across groups, in contrast with what is found in other international studies.