Discrimination of toddlers: a nationwide field experiment

Preliminary abstract of the paper

We provide causal evidence on whether toddlers face discrimination, independent of parents' race. Identifying discrimination against toddlers is methodologically difficult because most signals available to gatekeepers, such as names, speech, or behavior, are tied to parental characteristics. We exploit natural variation in children's skin tone within mixed-race parents, which is plausibly orthogonal to parental traits. We use this variation in a nationwide field experiment involving the near-universe of more than 25,000 German childcare facilities. Each facility receives a standardized email inquiry accompanied by an AI-generated family photograph in which parental appearance is held fixed while we gradually vary the toddler's racial features on a Black-white scale. We find a non-linear effect of race on response rates, information quality, and sentiment, with the Black toddlers showing the lowest response rate, independent of parental race. We further examine how discrimination varies with local level variables, such as right-wing vote shares, competition over childcare slots, and exposure to migrants. Joint paper with Felix Rusche.