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Banning the box *increases* racial discrimination

The Atlantic’s take on recent research by UO Economist Ben Hansen:

… So-called ban-the-box policies—which prevent employers from asking about a candidate’s criminal history until later on in the hiring process—aim to help people like Mathieson more easily enter the labor market. President Obama “banned the box” on federal-government employment applications last year, and as of December 2015, 24 states and the District of Columbia have required employers to ban the box in some form.

But banning the box may actually be hurting some of the exact groups of people it was designed to help, according to a few new studies. In a recent paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, Jennifer L. Doleac of the University of Virginia’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and Benjamin Hansen of the University of Oregon looked at how the implementation of ban-the-box policies affected the probability of employment for young, low-skilled, black and Hispanic men. They found that ban-the-box policies decreased the probability of being employed by 5.1 percent for young, low-skilled black men, and 2.9 percent for young, low-skilled Hispanic men.

That’s because, they say, when employers cannot access an applicant’s criminal history, they instead discriminate more broadly against demographic groups that are more likely to have a criminal record. The paper indicated that this type of discrimination is especially prevalent in the Northeast, Midwest, and West, where there is a larger pool of non-black applicants to choose from. In the South, because such a large proportion of job applicants are black, the opportunity to discriminate is reduced, the paper finds. “There is rapidly-increasing evidence that [banning the box] has unintentionally done more harm than good when it comes to helping disadvantaged job-seekers find jobs,” they write

5 Comments

  1. just different 08/05/2016

    Terrific. So employers want to know about criminal history up front so they can tell who the good black people are. The lemon justification (a larger fraction of blacks have criminal histories, so it’s better to discriminate against all blacks) is despicable, even if it’s “economically rational.”

    Antidiscrimination laws are most needed exactly when it is “rational” to discriminate. In this society, we’re supposed to be treating people as individuals. A checked box or a low credit score might have many possible explanations. But the whole reason employers want access to such reductive information early in the process is to make it easy to not bother with the explanation.

    • thedude 08/07/2016

      Well with the modern internet age even entry level jobs get a 100 applciations or more for a $10 an hour job. Employers are just looking for easy ways to reduce the application set they have to look through because interviewing is costly.

      • just different 08/07/2016

        All that means is that when there are too many choices, people start doing pointless (or illegal) things to narrow the range. There is an easy way for employers to reduce the application set. Determine which applicants have the necessary qualifications to do the job and pick ten at random for interviews. (Yes, at random. Anyone who thinks they can determine who the “most qualified” applicant is beyond that is deluding themselves.) The interview doesn’t tell you all that much either, but it tells you way more than a checked box or a credit score.

        • thedude 08/09/2016

          Actual I believe research on interviews suggests they don’t tell you much, but they do decide a lot on hiring. Credit scores certainly reveal a ton, and for whatever reason, employers believe criminal histories do too.

          I like your idea though. The problem is if 1 company cheats and interviews a few more, its to their advantage, and so the whole thing unravvles..

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