Triple Penalty in Employment Access: The Role of Beauty, Race, and Sex

Abstract

We investigate the role of physical appearance, in addition to race and sex, in the rate of discrimination observed in the labour market of Lima. Our experimental design allows us to disentangle the effect of each of those three variables on the callback rates received by our fictitious job candidates. Since we are controlling for variables that are important in the selection process (mainly, education and job experience), our results provide better indicators of discrimination than the ones we could obtain through the econometric analysis of observational data. We find that discrimination based on looks is greater than that based on race or sex. The first two types of discrimination are in professional and unskilled jobs.

Afro‐descendants in Peru: Do beauty and race matter in the labor market?

“…We find a sizeable beauty premium in unskilled occupations, no effect of looks in technical occupations and a large beauty penalty in professional occupations. We also find racial discrimination against Afro-Peruvians; interestingly, the magnitude of the racial gap (19.37 percent) is smaller than that reported against indigenous Peruvians, which is 54 percent (Galarza & Yamada, 2017). Taken together, our findings unveil different dynamics of discrimination, depending on job categories, which are typically overlooked by the existing literature.…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, the only experimental studies in economics that have examined the role of physical appearance in labor discrimination thus far are Galarza and Yamada () [for Peru], Ruffle and Shtudiner () [for Israel], Kraft () [for Germany], and López Bóo et al. () [for Argentina], and all used a résumé audit study in the same fashion as Bertrand and Mullainathan () did in their analysis of racial discrimination in the United States (they find a 50 percent higher call‐back rate for whites, as compared with similarly qualified African Americans).…”

“…Galarza and Yamada () sent fictitious résumés, randomly assigning surnames (proxy for race), gender and photographs (with a homely looking, beautiful or no photo) to analyze the effect of race, gender and beauty in the labor market of Lima, Peru. Those authors find that beautiful job applicants receive 82 percent more callbacks than homely looking ones, with similar qualifications.…”

“…1 To the best of our knowledge, the only experimental studies in economics that have examined the role of physical appearance in labor discrimination thus far are Galarza and Yamada (2017) [for Peru], Ruffle and Shtudiner (2014) [for Israel], Kraft (2012) [for Germany], and López Bóo et al (2013) [for Argentina], and all used a résumé audit study in the same fashion as Bertrand and Mullainathan (2004) did in their analysis of racial discrimination in the United States (they find a 50 percent higher call-back rate for whites, as compared with similarly qualified African Americans). Galarza and Yamada (2017) sent fictitious résumés, randomly assigning surnames (proxy for race), gender and photographs (with a homely looking, beautiful or no photo) to analyze the effect of race, gender and beauty in the labor market of Lima, Peru. Those authors find that beautiful job applicants receive 82 percent more callbacks than homely looking ones, with similar qualifications.…”

“…In the case of Peru, according to official self‐identification statistics, the Afro‐descendants represent 2 percent of the population and are less poor than the indigenous population (Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática, ). In terms of labor market outcomes, while recent evidence shows discrimination against indigenous (and in favor of whites) (Galarza & Yamada, ), there is no rigorous evidence of discrimination against Afro‐descendant Peruvians, aside from the individual cases that have been denounced and divulged in the local media, which are extremely difficult to prove as a systematic practice.…”