Original source
Stigma and Take-Up of Labor Market Assistance: Evidence from Two Field Experiments (2023)
Research manuscript
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Commercial Ad Platform Algorithmic Randomization Imbalance
"On that platform randomization is not directly controlled by the researchers, and we found significant imbalance in the covariates."
Agnostic Machine Learning Heterogeneity Detection in Field Trials
"Many studies have failed to find much evidence of stigma depressing take-up on average (see Currie (2006) for a survey), but as we show, this may be due to underlying heterogeneity that went undetected."
Compositional Selection Shift Under Zero Average Treatment Effects
"Even if a particular treatment intervention has no average effect on take-up relative to control, it can alter who participates if the effects are heterogeneous."
Digital Advertising Stigma Salience Amplification
"The professional stigma treatment leads to a decrease of 0.032 percentage points, a 26% decrease relative to the control group, and the social stigma treatment leads to a decrease of 0.047, or 39% relative to control."
Honest Split-Sample ML Heterogeneity Inference
"These methods use machine learning algorithms that predict the individual treatment effect for study participants using baseline data on others in the sample. This ensures that the estimated individual treatment effects are not merely a form of data-mining, but are in fact 'honest'."
Non-Applicant Selection Bias in Active Labor Market Evaluations
"There is a third group to consider, however: those who were eligible but never applied due to the method of recruitment. Estimates of the treatment effects in such a case may not be valid for this third group, and various types of stigma may explain why they are not in the sample."
Program Outcome Stigma Dominance Over Participation Stigma
"Our results suggest that in some contexts the stigmas surrounding program outcomes (e.g., entry-level jobs) may be more important than stigma surrounding program participation itself."
Personal Stigma Invariance in Behavioral Interventions
"On the other hand, we do not find any evidence of heterogeneity in the effects of the personal stigma treatment."
Policymaker Targeting Efficiency Dilemma Under Stigma Mitigation
"In our experiments, the treatments designed to alleviate stigma delivered applicants to the program who were generally richer, older, and more likely to be already working... In this case, a policy maker focused on impacts may find these interventions worthwhile, while one focused on the poor would not."
Price Penalty and Financial Incentive Asymmetry in Program Take-Up
"We found that application rates decrease with price but do not increase with the incentive."
Professional Stigma vs. Social Stigma Behavioral Differentiation
"The social stigma effect is significantly larger than the professional stigma effect at the 5% level, suggesting that these two stigmas are distinct phenomena."
Program Outcome Stigma versus Welfare Stigma
"Telling recruits that the program is subsidized 'to help those in financial hardship' has no significant effect on application rates or program composition, and we do not find significant evidence of heterogeneity in these effects."
Salience-Mitigation Duality in Stigma Framing
"This confirms that our mitigation attempts in Experiment 1 did help dispel some stigma concerns but were often outweighed by the negative salience effects. This shows the need for care in attempts to dispel stigma, since overall impacts will depend on the combination of the salience effect and the mitigation effect."
Empirical Prevalence of Occupational Stigma Misperceptions
"First, we show that there is belief among a sizeable minority of young Egyptian jobseekers that there are negative stigmas surrounding entry-level jobs. For example, 43% of jobseekers acknowledge that many people in society look down on these jobs."
Baseline Status Buffering in Stigma Response
"The treatments generally deliver wealthier applicants; these may be people who are less concerned about how their job affects their social standing, because they have other sources of high status that allows them to withstand any serious negative consequences from engaging in this type of labor market assistance."
Information-Induced Stigma Belief Isolation
"This undertaking confirms that our treatments act on beliefs about stigma and do not change beliefs about monetary returns."
Stigma Beliefs and Pecuniary Expectations Decoupling
"The results from our survey experiment clearly establish two things: first, that stigmas surrounding entry-level jobs exist, and second, that our treatment affects people's perceptions of stigma and not their monetary expectations of the jobs."
Stigma Salience versus Mitigation Dual Dynamic
"Making stigma concerns more salient by including them in the script leads to a negative effect on application rates for basically everyone in the sample and has a very strong negative effect on 'bottom group'. When we provide data and testimonials to try to dispel the stigma concerns, the significant negative effects disappear."
Stigma Mitigation Policy Targeting Trade-Off
"In our experiments, the treatments designed to alleviate stigma delivered applicants to the program who were generally richer, older, and more likely to be already working. These are likely not those with the most financial need."
Tripartite Job Stigma Taxonomy
"We find a large and statistically significant difference in the effects on the top and bottom group for professional stigma (p=0.015). On the other hand, we do not find any evidence of heterogeneity in the effects of the personal stigma treatment."