“For whom does the phone (not) ring? Discrimination in the rental housing market in Delhi, India is a working paper authored by Dr Vikram Pathania and Saugato Datta. They use an audit experiment carried out on one of India’s largest real estate websites to document rental housing discrimination against marginalised groups, particularly based on caste and religion. The key finding is suggestive of discrimination and bias–both overt and covert against Muslim candidates wherein there is a probability of 0.35 for the landlord to respond to an upper-caste applicant, but only 0.22 for a Muslim applicant. There is an additional 20 percentage points reduction in the probability of a callback for Muslim applicants.
This resource is an important addition because it is in line with Sustainable Development Goal 11–“”sustainable cities and communities”” and covers Target 11.1–Safe and affordable housing. Safe and affordable housing becomes a major concern for traditionally excluded groups, hence intersectional lens must be adopted as a priority.”
Source: IDEAS
People Involved: Saugato Datta, Vikram Pathania