Childbearing Age and the Shadow Mommy Effect on Hiring: A Large-Scale Field Experiment

时间：4月14日（周五）10:00-11:30

地点：承泽园245教室

主讲人：李景景 

主持人：张丹丹、黄炜

参与老师：赵耀辉、李玲、刘国恩、雷晓燕、易君健

摘要：Child penalty not only contributes to persistent gender gaps in the labor market, but also relates to declining fertility rate in a society. This study investigates the effect of women's childbearing age on labor market discrimination in China to identify the penalty for potential motherhood by conducting a large-scale field experiment. We send 35,713 fictitious resumes to real job postings on a major Chinese online recruitment platform for jobs in four leading cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. We apply for positions advertised in the male-dominated field of information technology (IT), the female-dominated field of accounting (ACC), and the mixed-gender field of human resources (HR). We systematically vary the age and gender of the job applicants and record callbacks for interviews. To accurately mimic the conventional job application process in the Chinese labor market, we do not disclose the applicants' family status. We find that women of childbearing age face discrimination in IT, as well as in HR and ACC, especially in Beijing and Shanghai. In general, the evidence indicates that women of childbearing age experience statistical discrimination, regardless of their actual motherhood status. This shadow mommy effect prevents them from obtaining equal employment opportunities. Furthermore, the results suggest a negative relationship between labor discrimination against women of childbearing age and the fertility rate in the city. Our study provides novel evidence on the extent and nature of labor market discrimination against women of childbearing age in China, and suggests possible policy interventions to address it.

主讲人简介：李景景 （Li King King），香港科技大学经济学博士，研究兴趣为实验经济学、行为经济学和行为金融。深圳大学深圳南特金融科技学院副教授，在此之前为香港城市大学助理教授、上海財經大學助理教授和德國Max Planck Institute of Economics博士后。研究成果被广泛引用， 其中发表于2013年Experimental Economics 关于记忆偏见的论文 Li (2013) “Asymmetric Memory Recall of Positive and Negative Events in Social Interactions” 揭示了人类策略性操控记忆的倾向，为以实验经济学研究记忆偏见的第一篇论文。其它开创性的工作包括语言（中文 vs. 英文）如何导致不同决策  (Li, 2017)、在有风险情况下的控制偏好与随机偏好 (Li, 2011)。担任期刊 Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization副主编（Associate Editor）和Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics编辑委员会成员。於实验经济学、行为经济学领域期刊发表论文多篇，包括 Management Science、 Experimental Economics、Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance 、Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics 、Journal of Risk and Uncertainty、Judgment and Decision Making 、Journal of Economic Psychology。近年来进行了劳动力市场育龄歧视、环境保护、过度借贷、竞争性偏好等与国民经济和社会发展中热点问题相关的实地实验研究，研究成果为相关政策的制定提供了参考。