Is there a rating bias of job candidates based on gender and parenthood? A laboratory experiment on hiring for an accounting job

2023. Anni Erlandsson, Magnus Bygren, Michael Gähler. Acta Sociologica

Article

Biased practices by employers have been suggested as one possible cause for the observed gender disparities in labor market outcomes. While US-based laboratory experiments show a clear motherhood penalty in recruitment, European laboratory experiments on the topic are to our knowledge lacking. We conducted a laboratory experiment with 228 university students to study a potential gender bias in the evaluation of (fictitious) job candidates for an accounting manager position, and how recruitment decisions are made. We explore two dimensions of decision-making, that is, evaluators’ individual ratings and collectively made ratings. The results show a statistically significant gender bias in job applicant ratings in favor of female applicants. Thus, female job applicants are more often than male applicants rated as the top candidates, regardless of their parental status. Also, we find no motherhood penalty in the applicant ratings. Moreover, there is a statistically significant pro-female bias in applicant ratings made by female evaluators individually and by all-female evaluation groups.

The opportunity structure of segregation: School choice and school segregation in Sweden

2022. Maria Brandén, Magnus Bygren. Acta Sociologica 65 (4), 420-438

Article

It is a matter of debate whether free school choice should lead to higher or lower levels of school segregation. We investigate how school choice opportunities affect school segregation utilizing geocoded Swedish population register data with information on 13 cohorts of ninth graders. We find that local school choice opportunities strongly affect the sorting of students across schools based on the parents’ country of birth and level of education. An increase in the number of local schools leads to higher levels of local segregation net of stable area characteristics, and time-varying controls for population structure and local residential segregation. In particular, the local presence of private voucher schools pushes school segregation upwards. The segregating impact of school choice opportunities is notably stronger in ‘native’ areas with high portions of highly educated parents, and in areas with low residential segregation. Our results point to the importance of embedding individual actors in relevant opportunity structures for understanding segregation processes.

Does employer discrimination contribute to the subordinate labor market inclusion of individuals of a foreign background?

2021. Moa Bursell, Magnus Bygren, Michael Gähler. Social Science Research 98

Article

Advanced labor markets are typically stratified by origin with a majority ethnic group occupying more desirable (high-skilled) positions and subordinated ethnic minorities occupying less desirable (low-skilled) positions. The aim of this paper is to investigate whether employer recruitment choices reinforce these patterns. This would be the case if employers were more reluctant to hire subordinate minority job applicants for high-skilled positions than for low-skilled occupations. We use experimental correspondence audit data derived from 6407 job applications sent to job openings in the Swedish labor market, where the ‘foreignness’ of the job applicants has been randomly assigned to otherwise equally merited job applications. We find that negative discrimination of job applicants with ‘foreign’ names is very similar in the high-skilled and low-skilled segments of the labor market. There is no significant relative ethnic difference in chances of callbacks by skill level. Because baseline callback rates are higher in high-skilled occupations, discrimination however translates into a significantly larger percentage unit callback difference between ‘natives’ and ‘foreigners’ in these occupations, in particular between male job applicants. That is, the number of (male) ‘foreign’ job seekers subject to ethnic discrimination in terms of actually being denied a job chance is higher in the highly skilled segment, but the effects on the relative scale do not suggest this to be driven by employers being particularly less welcoming of ‘foreigners’ in this segment.

Are Women Discriminated Against in Countries with Extensive Family Policies? A Piece of the “Welfare State Paradox” Puzzle from Sweden

2021. Magnus Bygren, Michael Gähler. Social Politics 28 (4), 921-947

Article

A common assumption in comparative family policy studies is that employers statistically discriminate against women in countries with dual-earner family policy models. The empirical evidence cited in support of this assumption has exclusively been observational data, which should not be relied on to identify employer discrimination. In contrast, we investigate whether employers discriminate against women in Sweden—frequently viewed as epitomizing the dual-earner family policy model—using field experiment data. We find no evidence supporting the notion that Swedish employers statistically discriminate against women.

The Constant Gap: Parenthood Premiums in Sweden 1968–2010

2020. Magnus Bygren, Michael Gähler, Charlotta Magnusson. Social Forces

Article

We know that parenthood has different consequences for men’s and women’s careers. Still, the research remains inconclusive on the question of whether this is mainly a consequence of a fatherhood premium, a motherhood penalty, or both. A common assumption is that women fall behind in terms of pay when they become mothers.

Based on longitudinal data from the Swedish Level of Living Survey (LNU), and individual fixed-effects models, we examine the support for this assumption by mapping the size of parenthood effects on wages during the years 1968–2010. During this period, Swedish women’s labor supply increased dramatically, dual-earner family policies were institutionalized, and society’s norms on the gendered division of labor changed. We describe the development of parenthood effects on wages during this transformative period.

Our results indicate that both genders benefit from a gross parenthood premium, both at the beginning of the period and in recent years, but the size of this premium is larger for men. Individual fixed-effects models indicate that the wage premium is mainly the result of parents’ increased labor market investments. Controlling for these, women suffer from a small motherhood penalty early in the period under study whereas parenthood is unrelated to women’s wages in later years and to men’s wages throughout the period. Neither for men nor for women do we find a statistically significant period change in the parenthood effects. Instead, patterns are remarkably stable over time given the radical changes in family policies and norms that took place during the period examined.

Elite Schools, Elite Ambitions? The Consequences of Secondary-Level School Choice Sorting for Tertiary-Level Educational Choices

2020. Magnus Bygren, Erik Rosenqvist. European Sociological Review

Article

We ask if school choice, through its effect on sorting across schools, affects high school graduates’ application decisions to higher education. We exploit a school choice reform that dramatically increased achievement sorting across secondary schools in the municipality of Stockholm, employing a before–after design with a control group of students in similar schools located outside this municipality. The reform had a close to zero mean effect on the propensity to apply for tertiary educational programs, but strongly affected the self-selection by achievement into the kinds of higher educational programs applied for. Low achievers increased their propensity to apply for the ‘low-status’ educational programs, on average destining them to less prestigious, less well-paid occupations, and high achievers increased their propensity to apply for ‘high-status’ educational programs, on average destining them to more prestigious, well-paid occupations. The results suggest that increased sorting across schools reinforces differences across schools and groups in ‘cultures of ambition’. Although these effects translate into relatively small increases in the gender gap, the immigration gap, and the parental education gap in educational choice, our results indicate that school choice, and the increased sorting it leads to, through conformity mechanisms in schools polarizes educational choices of students across achievement groups.

Biased grades? changes in grading after a blinding of examinations reform

2019. Magnus Bygren. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education

Article

Group differences in average grades prior to and after a step-wise introduction of blinded examinations at Stockholm University are examined. Relative to students with 'native' names, students with 'foreign' names appear to experience weak positive bias in the grading of their examinations, but the estimated effect is sensitive to model specification. No substantial effects of blinding examinations with respect to male-female gaps are found. The results suggest that examiners - when the names of students are disclosed to them - if anything have a weak tendency to positively discriminate for students perceived to have an immigrant background, but they do not appear to discriminate on the basis of gender.

Can the trailing spouse phenomenon be explained by employer recruitment choices?

2018. Maria Brandén, Magnus Bygren, Michael Gähler. Population, Space and Place

Article

It is well known that couples tend to relocate for the sake of the man's career rather than the woman's, also known as the “trailing spouse phenomenon.” The role of employer choices in this process is unknown however. If employers are hesitant to make job offers to women who live a long way from the workplace (e.g., because of work–family balance concerns or a perceived risk that they will not follow through on their applications, or stay hired if employed), this tendency might constitute an underlying mechanism behind the moving premium of partnered men. Ours is the first study to empirically test whether employers prefer geographically distant men over geographically distant women. We sent applications for 1,410 job openings in the Swedish labour market, randomly assigning gender and parental status to otherwise equivalent applications from cohabiting or married women and men and recorded employer callbacks to these. The results indicate that employers in general tend to disfavour job applicants who live a long way from the employer's workplace. This tendency is stronger for women, both for mothers and for women with no children. Our estimated effects are imprecise but clearly suggest that employer recruitment choices contribute to the trailing spouse phenomenon by offering men a larger pool of geographically distant jobs. We call for more research on this hitherto ignored mechanism behind the trailing spouse phenomenon.

Do Employers Prefer Fathers? Evidence from a Field Experiment Testing the Gender by Parenthood Interaction Effect on Callbacks to Job Applications

2017. Magnus Bygren, Erlandsson Anni, Michael Gähler. European Sociological Review 33 (3), 337-348

Article

In research on fatherhood premiums and motherhood penalties in career-related outcomes, employers’ discriminatory behaviours are often argued to constitute a possible explanation for observed gender gaps. However, there is as yet no conclusive evidence of such discrimination. Utilizing a field experiment design, we test (i) whether job applicants are subject to recruitment discrimination on the basis of their gender and parenthood status, and (ii) whether discrimination by gender and parenthood is conditional on the qualifications required by the job applied for. We applied for 2,144 jobs in the Swedish labour market, randomly assigning gender and parenthood status to fictitious job applicants. Based on the rate of callbacks, we do not find that employers practise systematic recruitment discrimination on the basis of the job applicants’ gender or parental status, neither in relation to less qualified nor more highly qualified jobs.

Using register data to estimate causal effects of interventions

2017. Magnus Bygren, Ryszard Szulkin. Scandinavian Journal of Public Health 45 (17), 50-55

Article

Aims: It is common in the context of evaluations that participants have not been selected on the basis of transparent participation criteria, and researchers and evaluators many times have to make do with observational data to estimate effects of job training programs and similar interventions. The techniques developed by researchers in such endeavours are useful not only to researchers narrowly focused on evaluations, but also to social and population science more generally, as observational data overwhelmingly are the norm, and the endogeneity challenges encountered in the estimation of causal effects with such data are not trivial. The aim of this article is to illustrate how register data can be used strategically to evaluate programs and interventions and to estimate causal effects of participation in these. Methods: We use propensity score matching on pretreatment-period variables to derive a synthetic control group, and we use this group as a comparison to estimate the employment-treatment effect of participation in a large job-training program. Results: We find the effect of treatment to be small and positive but transient. Conclusions: Our method reveals a strong regression to the mean effect, extremely easy to interpret as a treatment effect had a less advanced design been used (e.g. a within-subjects panel data analysis), and illustrates one of the unique advantages of using population register data for research purposes.

Ability Grouping's Effects on Grades and the Attainment of Higher Education

2016. Magnus Bygren. Sociology of education 89 (2), 118-136

Article

To test the effect of ability grouping on grades and the attainment of higher education, this study examines a naturally occurring experimentan admission reform that dramatically increased ability sorting between schools in the municipality of Stockholm. Following six cohorts of students (N= 79,020) from the age of 16 to 26, I find a mean effect close to zero and small positive and negative differentiating effects on grades. With regard to the attainment of higher education, I find a mean effect close to zero, the achievement group gap was unaffected, the immigrant-native gap increased, and the class background gap decreased. These results are consistent with much previous research that has found small mean effects of ability grouping. They are inconsistent with previous research, however, in that I find ability grouping's effects on gaps are rather small and point in different directions.

Unpacking the causes of segregation across workplaces

2013. Magnus Bygren. Acta Sociologica 56 (1), 3-19

Article

The way employee flows generate ethnic and gender segregation across workplaces is investigated using a population sample of 80,139 workplaces with 977,978 employees in the Stockholm area. Comparisons of actual stocks and flows of employees across workplaces to counterfactual simulations of these reveal that segregation clearly has a random component to it: Even with random allocation of employees to workplaces, segregation would still be substantial. Systematic (non-random) segregation appears to be upheld primarily because employees recruited to workplaces are similar to those already employed there, not because underrepresented groups within workplaces are systematically screened out. This tendency appears to be less connected to between-group differences in education, occupation or industry, but instead largely sustained by the tendency of employers to select new employees from a pool of workplaces where their employees have been employed previously. Network recruiting might generate this pattern, but unobserved individual and workplace factors cannot be ruled out as potential confounders. The results speak to theories of homosociality applied to segregation processes: If homosocial biases affect segregation, they apparently do so mostly in the recruitment process to workplaces, but less so through processes of exclusion of minorities from workplaces.

Family Formation and Men's and Women's Attainment of Workplace Authority

2012. Magnus Bygren, Michael Gähler. Social Forces 90 (3), 795-816

Article

Using Swedish panel data, we assess whether the gender gap in supervisory authority has changed during the period 1968-2000, and investigate to what extent the gap can be attributed to gender-specific consequences of family formation. The results indicate that the gap has narrowed modestly during the period, and that the life-event of parenthood is a major cause. As long as women and men are childless and single, the gender gap in supervisory authority is marginal, even reversed. When men become fathers, however, they strongly increase their chances for supervisory authority whereas women's chances remain unaffected when they become mothers. We also find a male "marriage premium" on workplace authority, but this premium is generated by selection.

The Gender Composition of Workplaces and Men's and Women's Turnover

2010. Magnus Bygren. European Sociological Review 26 (2), 193-202

Article

Using a data set of 721,123 employees in 1,890 Swedish workplaces, the author tests whether employees’ propensity to leave a workplace is dependent on the share of the employees of the opposite sex in a workplace. Net of time-invariant workplace heterogeneity, the probability to leave a workplace is found to decrease with the share of employees of the opposite sex. This is true for men as well as women. The results contradict theories suggesting that men and women prefer to work in work settings with a high proportion of employees of their own sex. On the contrary, a plausible explanation of the results is that both men and women prefer work settings with a high proportion of employees of the opposite sex.

Mechanisms of Organizational Segregation: Organizational Characteristics and the Sex of Newly Recruited Employees

2005. Magnus Bygren, Johanna Kumlin. Work and Occupations 32, 39-65

Article

This study examines the process underlying sex segregation at the organizational level by focusing on the process through which organizations renew their workforce. The authors used a sample of 1,460 Swedish workplaces that recruited 75,261 employees during the period 1991 to 1995. The results indicate that the most important factor in reproducing segregation at the organizational level is sex segregation in the occupations from which organizations recruit their personnel. Organizations’ sex composition is to a very high degree determined by the sex composition of the occupations they employ. In addition, large organizations and expanding organizations tend to make more sex-atypical recruitments compared with other organizations.

Being Different in the Workplace: Job Shifts into Other Workplaces and Shifts into Unemployment.

2004. Magnus Bygren. European Sociological Review 20 (3), 201-222

Article

This study evaluates contradictory theoretical predictions concerning consequences of belonging to a minority in a workplace context. The impact of workplace sex and ethnic composition on its constituent members' voluntary (workplace shifts) and involuntary (unemployment) mobility out of the workplace are assessed using a two-year panel sample of 170,433 employees in 1,928 Swedish workplaces. The results indicate that immigrants have a lower propensity to leave workplaces with relatively many immigrants. Moreover, minority women, as well as immigrants in workplaces with a high proportion of natives, run significantly larger risks of ending up in unemployment. These results largely support Kanter's and Blau's theories of demographic composition. In contrast to previous research, the ethnic dimension of organizations' demography seems to matter more than the sex dimension.

Pay Reference Groups and Pay Satisfaction. What Do Workers Evaluate Their Pay To?

2004. Magnus Bygren. Social Science Research 33, 206-224

Article

Reference group theory postulates that actors’ satisfaction originates in relative rather than absolute standing, but largely neglects the question of what these comparison standards actually are. This study contributes to filling this void through an empirical investigation of the standards against which workers evaluate their pay. The associations between several indicators of reference pay and pay satisfaction are examined among Swedish employees. The data set is unusually rich in its information about both the individual and the structural context in which workers’ pay satisfaction is formed: the past pay of the worker, and the pay level of the organizational, occupational, and national labor market context. The results indicate that Swedish workers’ satisfaction primarily stems from more general comparisons, relating to others in their occupation, and to others in the labor market at large. Comparisons with co-workers and the individuals’ own past pay seem to be of minor importance.

Parents’ Workplace Situation and Fathers’ Parental Leave Use

2006. Magnus Bygren, Ann-Zofie Duvander. Journal of Marriage and Family 68 (2), 363-372

Article

This study examines how the workplace situation of both parents affects fathers' parental leave use. We used parental leave-taking register data from Statistics Sweden for dual-earner couples who resided in Stockholm and had children in 1997 (n= 3,755). The results indicate that fathers shorten their parental leave if their workplaces are such that one can expect leave to be associated with high costs and that fathers appear to be influenced by the leave use of other fathers in the workplace. Mothers' workplace situation appears to be less important for fathers' leave use. The results point to the importance of actors other than parents (such as employers) for understanding the gender-based division of child care.

Ethnic Environment during Childhood and the Educational Attainment of Immigrant Children in Sweden

2007. Magnus Bygren, Ryszard Szulkin.

Report

We ask whether growing up with persons of the same national background (which we refer to as coethnics), in the immediate neighbourhood, influences future educational careers of children of immigrants. We use administrative data to follow an entire cohort of immigrant children who graduated from Swedish compulsory schools in 1995. We have information on their parents and on their ethnic environment during the period they were 10 – 15 years old. The dependent variable studied is the highest completed education in years at age 24. We are able to account for unobserved heterogeneity with neighbourhood fixed effects and ethnic group fixed effects. We find that the effect of the quantitative side of the ethnic environment (the number of

coethnics) on educational attainment is strongly conditioned by the qualitative side of this environment (the educational success of coethnics). The individual’s educational career is positively related to the number of young coethnics in the neighbourhood,

but only if they can be characterized as being educationally successful. Growing up in a large ethnic community with average or poor educational success is harmful for the future educational success. The effect of the ethnic surrounding in the highest

completed education is fully mediated by success in compulsory school.

Magnus BygrenProfessor of Sociology, Head of Department

Research

Research keywords

Research projects

Publications

Is there a rating bias of job candidates based on gender and parenthood? A laboratory experiment on hiring for an accounting job

The opportunity structure of segregation: School choice and school segregation in Sweden

Does employer discrimination contribute to the subordinate labor market inclusion of individuals of a foreign background?

Are Women Discriminated Against in Countries with Extensive Family Policies? A Piece of the “Welfare State Paradox” Puzzle from Sweden

The Constant Gap: Parenthood Premiums in Sweden 1968–2010

Elite Schools, Elite Ambitions? The Consequences of Secondary-Level School Choice Sorting for Tertiary-Level Educational Choices

Biased grades? changes in grading after a blinding of examinations reform

Can the trailing spouse phenomenon be explained by employer recruitment choices?

Do Employers Prefer Fathers? Evidence from a Field Experiment Testing the Gender by Parenthood Interaction Effect on Callbacks to Job Applications

Using register data to estimate causal effects of interventions

Ability Grouping's Effects on Grades and the Attainment of Higher Education

Unpacking the causes of segregation across workplaces

Family Formation and Men's and Women's Attainment of Workplace Authority

The Gender Composition of Workplaces and Men's and Women's Turnover

Mechanisms of Organizational Segregation: Organizational Characteristics and the Sex of Newly Recruited Employees

Being Different in the Workplace: Job Shifts into Other Workplaces and Shifts into Unemployment.

Pay Reference Groups and Pay Satisfaction. What Do Workers Evaluate Their Pay To?

Parents’ Workplace Situation and Fathers’ Parental Leave Use

Ethnic Environment during Childhood and the Educational Attainment of Immigrant Children in Sweden