Unequal? A Field Experiment of Recruitment Practises Towards Wheelchair Users in Denmark

Abstract

To what extent are employers willing to invite applicants in wheelchairs to job interviews when the applicant is comparable to applicants not in wheelchairs and the job can be conducted by a person in a wheelchair? We have conducted the first Danish field experiment with 1,200 fictive applications for real job adverts in four different job functions to measure the independent effect of being a wheelchair user. We find a significant difference in callback rates. Wheelchair users need to send more than twice as many applications to be successful compared to applicants without disabilities. Seventeen percent of the applicants without a disability were invited to a job interview compared to 7.7 percent of the applicants in wheelchairs. Our analysis indicates that the difference in callback rates is related to the negative signal that ‘disability’ transmits to employers and is a result of discrimination in the labour market.