Physical Disability and Labor Market Discrimination : Evidence from a Field Experiment

We investigate the determinants and extent of labor market discrimination to-ward people with physical disabilities using a large scale field experiment. Appli-cations were randomly sent to 1477 private firms advertising open positions. We find that average callback rates of disabled and non-disabled applicants are respec-tively 14.4% and 7.2%. We find this differential does not result from accessibility constraints related to firm infrastructures. We also find that mentioning eligibility to a government subsidy to cover the cost of workplace adaptation does not in-crease callback rates. Finally, we estimate that a lower bound of the proportion of discriminating firms is 49.7%.

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