60 • INCLUSION MATTERS
BOX 1.1
Measuring Discrimination They ask you how old you are; if you plan to have children, they will not hire you. They also do not employ women who are more than 35 years old, because younger women are quicker. I can iron 100 pieces, she can iron 10 pieces. —Female focus group discussant in Azanja, Serbia, interviewed for the World Development Report 2012
Initially developed to test discrimination in the labor market, methods to measure discrimination have advanced considerably in recent years. The most common methods use labor market surveys and compare market outcomes, such as earnings, of different groups, controlling for productivity-related individual characteristics (such as human capital endowments). Studies traditionally focused mainly on race and gender as the axes of discrimination, but an increasing number of studies are now also testing for discrimination along other axes, including immigrant status, disability status, and ethnicity (see, for example, Ñopo, Saavedra, and Torero 2007, who introduce indicators to capture “degrees of whiteness” or “indigenousness”’ to account for heterogeneity within the Peruvian mestizo population). They are also focusing on new arenas of discrimination, such as the marriage market. In so-called correspondence tests, applications are submitted to job or housing advertisements in the name of two fictitious applicants. The applications are largely equivalent, with the only difference the potential marker of discrimination, such as a foreign surname. Discrimination is then assessed as the difference in call-back rates or invitations to personal interviews or property viewings the candidates receive. In audit studies, matched pairs of interviewees (actors) who differ with regard to the characteristic suspected to trigger discrimination (such as race or gender) attend interviews. Another way of measuring discrimination is based on perceptions. Individuals are asked about personal experiences and views regarding unequal treatment. Such questions are included, for instance, in social surveys such as the European Social Survey, the Eurobarometer, and the General Social Surveys in Canada and New Zealand. Surveys may ask respondents about personal experiences of discrimination or more abstractly about whether they consider themselves members of a group that is discriminated against. Sources: Daniel 1968; Jowell and Prescott-Clarke 1970; Yinger 1986; Neumark, Bank, and Van Nort 1996; Salkever and Domino 1997; Ñopo, Saavedra, and Torero 2007; Jha and Adelman 2009; Kuhn and Shen 2009; Das 2012; OECD 2012; World Bank 2012.