Do landlords discriminate? The incidence and causes of racial discrimination in rental housing markets

Discrimination in housing markets occurs when equally qualified people are treated differently because of their membership in a particular group. This study focuses on racial and ethnic discrimination in qualitative actions b y landlords, such as making an:advertised housing unit available for inspec tion by a customer. The data come from the Housing Discrimination Study, wh ich conducted over 1500 rental housing audits in 25 metropolitan areas in 1 989. Each audit consists of a visit to a landlord by a white person and eit her a black or Hispanic person with similar socio-economic characteristics. Using Chamberlain's fixed-effect legit estimation, we develop a nationally representative measure of the incidence of discrimination in landlord beha vior and conduct hypothesis rests on the incidence and causes of discrimina tion. The results indicate widespread discrimination across several types o f landlord behavior and support the hypotheses that landlords discriminate both out of personal prejudice and in response to the prejudice of present and future white clients. (C) 1999 Academic Press.