Stigma and Take-up of Labor Market Assistance: Evidence from Two Field Experiments

Arbeitspapier

Aversion to "stigma" - disutility associated with a program or activity due to beliefs about how it is perceived - may affect labor market choices and utilization of social programs, but empirical evidence of its importance is scarce. Using two randomized field experiments, we show that stigma can affect consequential labor market decisions. Treatments designed to alleviate stigma concerns about taking entry-level jobs - such as how those jobs are perceived by society - had small average effects on take-up of job assistance programs. However, using compositional analysis and machine learning methods, we document large heterogeneity in the responses to our treatments. Stigma significantly affects the composition of who takes up a program: the treatments were successful in overcoming stigma for older, wealthier, and working respondents. For other people, we show that our treatments merely increased the salience of the stigma without dispelling it. We conclude that social image concerns affect labor market decisions and that messaging surrounding programs can have important effects on program take-up and composition.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 16599

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Time Allocation and Labor Supply ; Field Experiments ; Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty: Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs ; Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification
• Subject: stigma ; experiment ; machine learning

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Osman, Adam ; Speer, Jamin D.
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2023

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/282726
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET