This article examines disability discrimination in the hiring process and explores variation in how the intersection of disability and gender shapes employers’ hiring behavior. We use data from a field experiment in which 2,048 job applications with randomly assigned information about disability were sent to Swedish employers with vacancies. Nondisabled applicants received 33% more callbacks than similarly qualified wheelchair users despite applying for jobs for which the impairment should not interfere with performance. The results indicate no heterogeneity in disability discrimination against men and women on average across occupations or by occupational gender segregation. However, discrimination rates differ considerably among occupations, varying from no evidence of disability discrimination to discrimination against both disabled men and disabled women as well as cases in which disability discrimination is found only against women or only against men. The results indicate that discrimination based on disability, and the intersection between disability and gender, is highly occupation specific.

This paper estimates family spillovers in high school major choice in Sweden, where admission to oversubscribed majors is determined based on GPA. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find large sibling and intergenerational spillovers that depend on the sex mix of a dyad. Same-sex siblings copy one another, while younger brothers recoil from an older sister's choices. Fathers and mothers influence sons but not their daughters, except when a mother majors in the male-dominated program of engineering. Back-of-the-envelope calculations reveal that these within-family spillovers have sizable implications for the sex composition of majors.

Being overweight or obese is associated with lower employment and earnings, possibly arising from employer discrimination. A few studies have used field experiments to show that obese job applicants are, in fact, discriminated against in the hiring process. However, whether overweight job applicants also face employer discrimination is still an open question. To this end, we have designed a correspondence testing experiment in which fictitious applications are sent to real job openings across twelve different occupations in the Spanish labor market. We compare the callback rate for applications with a facial photo of a normal weight person to the one for applications with a photo of the same person manipulated into looking overweight.Applications with a photo of the weight-manipulated male receive significantly fewer callbacks for a job interview compared to normal weight, and this differential treatment is especially pronounced in female dominated occupations. For women, we find the opposite result. Weightmanipulated female applications receive slightly more callbacks, especially in female dominated occupations. Our experimental design allows us to disentangle whether employers act on attractiveness or weight when hiring. For men, the weight manipulation effect is explained by an attractiveness premium, while for women we find evidence of an attractiveness penalty, as well as a weight penalty, in explaining the effect.

This article examines disability discrimination in the hiring process and explores variation in how the intersection of disability and gender shapes employers' hiring behavior by occupational context and gender segregation. We use data from a field experiment in which approximately 2,000 job applications with randomly assigned information about disability were sent to Swedish employers with vacancies. We find that nondisabled applicants receive 33 percent more callbacks than similarly qualified wheelchair users despite applying for jobs where the impairment should not interfere with performance. The results indicate no heterogeneity in levels of disability discrimination against men and women on average across occupations or by occupational gender segregation. However, levels of discrimination differ considerably among occupations, varying from no evidence of disability discrimination to discrimination against both disabled men and disabled women as well as cases where disability discrimination is found only against women or only against men. The results thus indicate that disability and gender interact and shape discrimination in distinct ways within particular contexts, which we relate to intersectional stereotyping and norms of gender equality influencing hiring practices but not to declared ambitions for diversity or gender equality legislation.

We study how high school majors affect adult earnings using a regression discontinuity design. In Sweden students are admitted to majors in tenth grade based on their preference rankings and ninth grade GPA. We find engineering, natural science, and business majors yield higher earnings than social science and humanities, with major-specific returns also varying based on next-best alternatives. There is either a zero or a negative return to completing an academic program for students with a second-best nonacademic major. Most of the differences in adult earnings can be attributed to differences in occupation, and to a lesser extent, college major.

This paper estimates family spillovers in high school major choice in Sweden, where admission to oversubscribed majors is determined based on GPA. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find large sibling and intergenerational spillovers that depend on the gender mix of a dyad. Same-gender siblings copy one another, while younger brothers recoil from older sister's choices. Fathers and mothers influence sons, but not their daughters, except when a mother majors in the male-dominated program of Engineering. Back of the envelope calculations reveal these within family spillovers have sizable implications for the gender composition of majors.

Labor markets in advanced economies have undergone substantial change in recentdecades due to globalization, technological improvements, and organizational changes. Due tothese developments, oral and written language skills have become increasingly important evenin less skilled jobs. Immigrants – who often have limited skills in the host country languageupon arrival – are likely to be particularly affected by the increase in language requirements.Despite this increase in literacy requirements, little is known about how immigrants’ languageproficiency is rewarded in the labor market. However, estimating the causal effect ofimmigrants’ language skills on hiring is challenging due to potential biases caused by omittedvariables, reverse causality, and measurement error.To address identification problems, we conduct a large-scale field experiment, where wesend thousands of fictitious resumes to employers with a job opening. With the help of aprofessional linguist, we manipulate the cover letters by introducing common second-languagefeatures, which makes the resumes reflect variation in the language skills of real-worldmigrants. Our findings show that better language proficiency in the cover letter has a strongpositive effect on the callback rate for a job interview: moving from the lowest level of languageproficiency to a level similar to natives almost doubles the callback rate. Consistent with therecent development that language proficiency is also important for many low- and mediumskilledjobs, the effect of better language skills does not vary across the vastly different typesof occupations we study. Finally, the results from employer surveys suggest that it is improvedlanguage skills per se that is the dominant explanation behind the language proficiency effect,rather than language skills acting as a proxy for other unobserved abilities or characteristics.

Being overweight or obese is associated with lower employment and earnings, possibly arising from employer discrimination. A few studies have used field experiments to show that obese job applicants are, in fact, discriminated against in the hiring process. However, whether overweight job applicants also face employer discrimination is still an open question. To this end, we have designed a correspondence testing experiment in which fictitious applications are sent to real job openings across twelve different occupations in the Spanish labor market. We compare the callback rate for applications with a facial photo of a normal weight person to the one for applications with a photo of the same person manipulated into looking overweight. Applications with a photo of the weight-manipulated male receive significantly fewer callbacks for a job interview compared to normal weight, and this differential treatment is especially pronounced in female-dominated occupations. For women, we find the opposite result. Weight-manipulated female applications receive slightly more callbacks, especially in female-dominated occupations. Our experimental design allows us to disentangle whether employers act on attractiveness or weight when hiring. For men, the weight manipulation effect is explained by an attractiveness premium, while for women we find evidence of an attractiveness penalty, as well as a weight penalty, in explaining the effect.

We study the long-term impact of a policy-driven change in childhood nutrition. For this purpose, we evaluate a program that rolled out nutritious school lunches free of charge to all pupils in Swedish primary schools between 1959 and 1969. We estimate the impact of the program on children’s economic, educational, and health outcomes throughout life. Our results show that the school lunch program generated substantial long-term benefits, where pupils exposed to the program during their entire primary school period have 3% higher lifetime income. The effect was greater for pupils that were exposed at earlier ages and for pupils from poor households, suggesting that the program reduced socioeconomic inequalities in adulthood. Exposure to the program also had substantial effects on educational attainment and health, which can explain a large part of the effect of the program on lifetime income.

In this article we present the long-run gains of adopting a nutritious school meal program for Swedish children. During the 1960s, Sweden rolled out a universal program that provided nutritious school lunches free of charge to all children in Swedish primary schools. Our results show that the school lunch program generated substantial long-term benefits, where pupils exposed to the program during their entire primary school period have 3 percent greater life-time earnings. This effect was greater for pupils from poor households, suggesting that the program reduced socioeconomic inequalities in adulthood. Exposure to the school lunch program also had substantial effects on educational attainment and health.