Title
Triple penalty in employment access: The role of beauty, race, and sex
Date Issued
01 May 2017
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Publisher(s)
Universidad del Pacífico
Abstract
This article reports the results from a first experiment specifically designed to disentangle the effect of beauty from that of race in the observed labor market discrimination, for both females and males in Peru. We randomly assigned Quechua and white surnames and (subjectively perceived) attractive or homely-looking photographs (or no photos) to 4,899 fictitious résumés sent in response to 1,247 job openings. We find that candidates who are physically attractive, have a white-sounding surname, and are males, receive 82%, 54%, and 34% more callbacks for job interviews than their similarly-qualified counterparts, thus imposing a triple penalty on homely-looking, indigenous, and female job candidates. We further find that the intensity of discrimination by race and physical appearance differs for males and females; the intensity of discrimination by physical appearance and sex differs for Quechua and white applicants; and the intensity of racial and sexual discrimination differs for beautiful and homely-looking persons.
Start page
29
End page
47
Volume
20
Issue
1
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Economía
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85019650344
Source
Journal of Applied Economics
ISSN of the container
15140326
Sources of information: Directorio de Producción Científica Scopus