IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0235438.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Those who tan and those who don’t: A natural experiment on colorism

Author

Listed:
  • Tamar Kricheli Katz
  • Tali Regev
  • Shay Lavie
  • Haggai Porat
  • Ronen Avraham

Abstract

Are darker-skinned workers discriminated against in the labor market? Studies using survey data have shown that darker skin tone is associated with increased labor market disadvantages. However, it is hard to refute the possibility that other factors correlated with skin tones might affect employment outcomes. To overcome this inherent limitation, we use a natural experiment: we utilize changes in one’s own skin tone, generated by exposure to the sun, to explore the effect of skin tone on the tendency to be employed. We find that those people whose skin tone becomes darker by exposure to the sun (but not others) are less likely to be employed when the UV radiation in the previous three weeks in the area in which they reside is greater. These within-person findings hold even when controlling for the week, the year, the region, demographic characteristics and the occupation and industry one is employed in.

Suggested Citation

  • Tamar Kricheli Katz & Tali Regev & Shay Lavie & Haggai Porat & Ronen Avraham, 2020. "Those who tan and those who don’t: A natural experiment on colorism," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(7), pages 1-14, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0235438
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0235438
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0235438
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0235438&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0235438?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fernández-Val, Iván & Weidner, Martin, 2016. "Individual and time effects in nonlinear panel models with large N, T," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 192(1), pages 291-312.
    2. Arthur H. Goldsmith & Darrick Hamilton & William Darity Jr, 2006. "Shades of Discrimination: Skin Tone and Wages," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(2), pages 242-245, May.
    3. Zvi Eckstein & Kenneth I. Wolpin, 1999. "Estimating The Effect Of Racial Discrimination On First Job Wage Offers," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(3), pages 384-392, August.
    4. Joni Hersch, 2006. "Skin-Tone Effects among African Americans: Perceptions and Reality," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(2), pages 251-255, May.
    5. Jingye Shi & Mikal Skuterud, 2015. "Gone Fishing! Reported Sickness Absenteeism And The Weather," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 53(1), pages 388-405, January.
    6. Pager, Devah & Western, Bruce & Bonikowski, Bart, 2009. "Discrimination in a Low-Wage Labor Market: A Field Experiment," IZA Discussion Papers 4469, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Marianne Bertrand & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(4), pages 991-1013, September.
    8. Devah Pager, 2003. "The mark of a criminal record," Natural Field Experiments 00319, The Field Experiments Website.
    9. Kevin Lang & Michael Manove, 2011. "Education and Labor Market Discrimination," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(4), pages 1467-1496, June.
    10. Daniel Kreisman & Marcos A. Rangel, 2015. "On the Blurring of the Color Line: Wages and Employment for Black Males of Different Skin Tones," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 97(1), pages 1-13, March.
    11. Neal, Derek A & Johnson, William R, 1996. "The Role of Premarket Factors in Black-White Wage Differences," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(5), pages 869-895, October.
    12. Joseph A Ritter & Lowell J Taylor, 2011. "Racial Disparity in Unemployment," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(1), pages 30-42, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Roland G. Fryer, Jr. & Devah Pager & Jörg L. Spenkuch, 2013. "Racial Disparities in Job Finding and Offered Wages," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(3), pages 633-689.
    2. Christopher Rauh & Aranu Valladares-Esteban, 2023. "On the black-white gaps in labor supply and earnings over the lifecycle in the US," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 51, pages 424-449, December.
    3. Borowczyk-Martins, Daniel & Bradley, Jake & Tarasonis, Linas, 2018. "Racial discrimination in the U.S. labor market: Employment and wage differentials by skill," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 45-66.
    4. Cai, Zhengyu & Maguire, Karen & Winters, John V., 2019. "Who benefits from local oil and gas employment? Labor market composition in the oil and gas industry in Texas and the rest of the United States," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    5. Srikant Devaraj & Pankaj C. Patel, 2017. "Skin Tone and Self-Employment: is there an Intra-Group Variation among Blacks?," The Review of Black Political Economy, Springer;National Economic Association, vol. 44(1), pages 137-166, June.
    6. John J. Donohue III, 2005. "The Law and Economics of Antidiscrimination Law," NBER Working Papers 11631, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. David Neumark, 2018. "Experimental Research on Labor Market Discrimination," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 56(3), pages 799-866, September.
    8. Chowdhury, Shyamal & Ooi, Evarn & Slonim, Robert, 2017. "Racial discrimination and white first name adoption: a field experiment in the Australian labour market," Working Papers 2017-15, University of Sydney, School of Economics.
    9. Bond, Timothy N. & Lehmann, Jee-Yeon K., 2018. "Prejudice and racial matches in employment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 271-293.
    10. Celeste K. Carruthers & Marianne H. Wanamaker, 2017. "Separate and Unequal in the Labor Market: Human Capital and the Jim Crow Wage Gap," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 35(3), pages 655-696.
    11. Devah Pager, 2007. "The Use of Field Experiments for Studies of Employment Discrimination: Contributions, Critiques, and Directions for the Future," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 609(1), pages 104-133, January.
    12. Romain Aeberhardt & Élise Coudin & Roland Rathelot, 2017. "The heterogeneity of ethnic employment gaps," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 30(1), pages 307-337, January.
    13. Piopiunik, Marc & Schwerdt, Guido & Simon, Lisa & Woessmann, Ludger, 2020. "Skills, signals, and employability: An experimental investigation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    14. David Neumark, 2016. "Experimental Research on Labor Market Discrimination," NBER Working Papers 22022, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Randall Akee & Mutlu Yuksel, 2012. "The Decreasing Effect of Skin Tone on Women's Full-Time Employment," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 65(2), pages 398-426, April.
    16. Rathelot, Roland, 2014. "Ethnic differentials on the labor market in the presence of asymmetric spatial sorting: Set identification and estimation," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 154-167.
    17. Nicole Maestas & Kathleen J. Mullen & David Powell & Till von Wachter & Jeffrey B. Wenger, 2023. "The Value of Working Conditions in the United States and the Implications for the Structure of Wages," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 113(7), pages 2007-2047, July.
    18. Amon Emeka, 2018. "Where Race Matters Most: Measuring the Strength of Association Between Race and Unemployment Across the 50 United States," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 136(2), pages 557-573, April.
    19. Stijn Baert & Elsy Verhofstadt, 2015. "Labour market discrimination against former juvenile delinquents: evidence from a field experiment," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(11), pages 1061-1072, March.
    20. Richard Chisik, 2015. "Job market signalling, stereotype threat and counter‐stereotypical behaviour," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 48(1), pages 155-188, February.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0235438. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.