Abstract
When workers from underrepresented groups opt out of “higher risk, higher reward” jobs, income gaps arise. Workers may rationally avoid applying to jobs where they’d be disproportionately punished for failure, and employer bias informs how employers interpret negative productivity signals from workers of different identities. Socialized group differences in traits such as risk aversion or other-regarding preferences also influence job choice. Our proposed research aims to answer: Do workers from underrepresented groups take disproportionate action to avoid failure on the job? If so, what proportion of any resultant gaps in job choice are due to anticipated discrimination versus socialized differences in behavioral traits? We propose running an experiment in which we randomly vary the potential consequences for failure on the job, and observe how this affects job choices for workers from different demographic groups.