Racial Discrimination and Administrative Burden in Access to Public Services

Area of Science:

• Public Administration
• Sociology
• Economics

Background:

• Equal access to public services is crucial for democratic societies.
• Bureaucratic discrimination, or differential treatment by officials, contributes to persistent inequalities.
• Racial discrimination may function as a 'cream-skimming' strategy when economic incentives favor serving 'easier' clients.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the causal mechanism of bureaucratic discrimination.
• To determine if racial discrimination is employed as a 'cream-skimming' tactic in public service access.
• To test the hypothesis that group-level performance information is imposed on racially minoritized individuals without client-specific performance data.

Main Methods:

• A nationwide email correspondence audit experiment was conducted.
• The experiment included all charter school principals in the United States (n=5850).
• Email aliases representing different racial groups (Black and White) were used to assess differential treatment.

Main Results:

• Black email aliases encountered significantly higher administrative burdens when seeking charter school access compared to White aliases, in the absence of performance signals.
• When a direct performance signal of prospective clients was introduced, racial disparities in administrative burdens diminished.
• These findings support the 'cream-skimming' hypothesis as a mechanism for bureaucratic discrimination.

Conclusions:

• Bureaucratic discrimination can be driven by economic incentives to prioritize certain clientele.
• Racial discrimination plays a role in this 'cream-skimming' process, particularly when client information is limited.
• Policy interventions should consider how to mitigate bias in service access, especially in the absence of clear performance indicators.