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Does Race Affect Access to Government Services? An Experiment Exploring Street‐Level Bureaucrats and Access to Public Housing

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  • Katherine Levine Einstein
  • David M. Glick

Abstract

While experimental studies of local election officials have found evidence of racial discrimination, we know little about whether these biases manifest in bureaucracies that provide access to valuable government programs and are less tied to politics. We address these issues in the context of affordable housing programs using a randomized field experiment. We explore responsiveness to putative white, black, and Hispanic requests for aid in the housing application process. In contrast to prior findings, public housing officials respond at equal rates to black and white email requests. We do, however, find limited evidence of responsiveness discrimination toward Hispanics. Moreover, we observe substantial differences in email tone. Hispanic housing applicants were 20 percentage points less likely to be greeted by name than were their black and white counterparts. This disparity in tone is somewhat more muted in more diverse locations, but it does not depend on whether a housing official is Hispanic.

Suggested Citation

  • Katherine Levine Einstein & David M. Glick, 2017. "Does Race Affect Access to Government Services? An Experiment Exploring Street‐Level Bureaucrats and Access to Public Housing," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 61(1), pages 100-116, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:wly:amposc:v:61:y:2017:i:1:p:100-116
    DOI: 10.1111/ajps.12252
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    Cited by:

    1. Kenneth Lowande & Andrew Proctor, 2020. "Bureaucratic Responsiveness to LGBT Americans," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 64(3), pages 664-681, July.
    2. Nicholas Carnes & John Holbein, 2019. "Do public officials exhibit social class biases when they handle casework? Evidence from multiple correspondence experiments," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(3), pages 1-9, March.
    3. Nicholas R. Jenkins & Michelangelo Landgrave & Gabriel E. Martinez, 2020. "Do political donors have greater access to government officials? Evidence from a FOIA field experiment with US municipalities," Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, Center for Experimental and Behavioral Public Administration, vol. 3(2).
    4. Mikula, Stepan & Montag, Josef, 2023. "Roma and Bureaucrats: A Field Experiment on Ethnic and Socioeconomic Discrimination," IZA Discussion Papers 16218, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Druckman, James N. & Levy, Jeremy & Sands, Natalie, 2021. "Bias in education disability accommodations," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    6. Malte Dahl, 2022. "Alike but Different: How Cultural Distinctiveness Shapes Immigrant-Origin Minorities’ Access to the Labour Market," Journal of International Migration and Integration, Springer, vol. 23(4), pages 2269-2287, December.
    7. Wibbenmeyer, Matthew & Anderson, Sarah & Plantinga, Andrew J., 2020. "Inequality in Agency Responsiveness: Evidence from Salient Wildfire Events," RFF Working Paper Series 20-22, Resources for the Future.
    8. Kolstad, Karoline Larsen, 2023. "Overburdened Bureaucrats: Providing Equal Access to Public Services during COVID-19," OSF Preprints zmt5y, Center for Open Science.
    9. Gundacker, Lidwina & Kosyakova, Yuliya & Schneider, Gerald, 2021. "Global norms, regional practices: Taste-based and statistical discrimination in German asylum decision-making," Working Papers 05, University of Konstanz, Cluster of Excellence "The Politics of Inequality. Perceptions, Participation and Policies".
    10. Pfaff, Steven & Crabtree, Charles & Kern, Holger L. & Holbein, John B., 2018. "Does religious bias shape access to public services? A large-scale audit experiment among street-level bureaucrats," SocArXiv 9khds, Center for Open Science.
    11. Donavon Johnson & Alexander Kroll, 2021. "What makes us tolerant of administrative burden? Race, representation, and identity," Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, Center for Experimental and Behavioral Public Administration, vol. 4(1).
    12. Wittels, Annabelle Sophie, 2020. "The effect of politician-constituent conflict on bureaucratic responsiveness under varying information frames," SocArXiv 4x8q2, Center for Open Science.
    13. Štěpán Mikula & Josef Montag, 2022. "Roma and Bureaucrats: A Field Experiment in the Czech Republic," MUNI ECON Working Papers 2022-01, Masaryk University, revised Feb 2023.
    14. Adman, Per & Larsson Taghizadeh, Jonas, 2020. "Public officials’ treatment of minority clients," Working Paper Series 2020:12, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.

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