Indiscriminate Discrimination: A correspondence Test for Ethnic Homophily in the Chicago Labor Market

The extent of racial discrimination in the labor market is now clearly identified, but its nature largely remains an open question. This paper reports results from an experiment in which fabricated resumes are sent to help-wanted advertisements in Chicago newpapers. We use three groups of identical resumes: one with Anglo-Saxon names, one with African-American names and one with fictitious foreign names whose ethnic origin is unidentifiable to most Americans. We find that resumes with Anglo-Saxon names generate nearly one half more call-backs than identical resumes with African-American or Foreign names. Resumes with non-Anglo-Saxon names, whether African-American or Foreign, show no statistically significant difference in the number of callbacks they elicit. We also find that discrimination is significantly higher in the Chicago suburbs - where ethnic homogenity is high - as opposed to the city proper. We take this as evidence that discriminatory behavior is part of a larger pattern of unequal treatment of any member of non-majority groups - ethnic homophily.