Colorism in the Rental Housing Market: Field Experimental Evidence of Discrimination by Skin Color

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Paper Summary

Conflicts of Interest

Identified Weaknesses

Rating Explanation

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Paper Summary

Paperzilla title

Skin Color Matters: Lighter Skin Can Be a Disadvantage for Hispanic Renters

This field experiment used data from a HUD study to investigate colorism in the rental housing market. It found that darker-skinned Black renters faced more discrimination, while lighter-skinned Hispanic renters also experienced discrimination, contrary to some previous findings. The study highlights how the race of both the renter and the housing agent can influence discriminatory practices.

Possible Conflicts of Interest

None identified

Identified Weaknesses

Only covers Rental Market

The study acknowledges that sales and rental markets are different and thus it limits its analysis to rental markets, where the chance of long-term interaction could induce more discrimination up front.

Lack of transparency about skin color coding process

The study could not obtain details about the skin color coding process that HUD used to rate the testers, making it difficult to fully asses its robustness.

Restricted scope

The constraint that testers must have been shown the same unit might not reflect the reality of how a person goes about searching for housing, limiting the study's scope.

Only limited scope in rental process

The study didn't investigate if color-based discrimination exists beyond the initial phases of securing a house and didn't collect data about discrimination when signing the lease or issues that might occur after that.

Rating Explanation

This is a well-designed study that offers unique insight into the dynamics of colorism using an experimental approach in a real-world setting, but has some limitations regarding the scope of the data.

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