Ethnic discrimination in the London market for shared accommodation

• Finding housing in London is a major challenge for most people. Therefore, it has become increasingly common to share an apartment or a house with others. For people with limited financial resources, such as students and even young professionals, this is often one of the few viable types of housing available. Shared accommodation clearly has the potential to mitigate some of the negative consequences that the housing shortage has created. However, studies of housing markets in other countries suggest that ethnic discrimination is common and, thus, a policy-relevant question for London is if shared accommodation is equally available to everyone. In this paper, we study discrimination in the market for shared accommodation against four of the most important ethnic minorities in London: People with Eastern European, Indian, Black African and Arabic backgrounds. To this end, we conducted a field experiment where we e-mailed applications, with a randomly assigned name signalling ethnicity, to more than 5,000 people advertising shared accommodations all over London. Our main finding is that ethnic discrimination is widespread against all the ethnic minorities that we consider: The situation is worst for applicants with an Arabic or Black African background, while applicants with an Eastern European background are least affected and applicants with an Indian background are found somewhere inbetween. Moreover, our results suggest that ethnic discrimination may reinforce the ethnic concentration in London, where ethnic minorities tend to live in certain areas and often separated from the ethnic majority. Finally, our results indicate that – at least a portion of – the discrimination that we find is statistical discrimination. 

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Nationalekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Economics (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Economics

Nationalekonomi

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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