Peter Hull | Measuring Discrimination in Multi-Phase Systems with an Application to Child Protection

Big Data Conference 2024
9/6/2024
Speaker: Peter Hull, Brown University
Title: Measuring Discrimination in Multi-Phase Systems, with an Application to Child Protection
Abstract: Large racial disparities have been documented in many high-stakes settings-such as employment, health care, housing, and criminal justice-raising concerns of discrimination by individual decision-makers. At the same time, there is growing understanding that a focus on individual decisions can yield an incomplete view of discrimination; an extensive theoretical literature shows how discrimination can arise and compound across multiple decision-makers in interconnected systems. We develop new empirical tools for studying discrimination in such multi-phase systems and apply them to the setting of foster care placement by child protective services. Leveraging the quasi-random assignment of two sets of decision-makers-initial hotline call screeners and subsequent investigators-we study how unwarranted racial disparities arise and propagate through this system. Using a sample of over 200,000 maltreatment allegations, we find that calls involving Black children are 55% more likely to result in foster care placement than calls involving white children with the same potential for future maltreatment in the home. Call screeners account for up to 19% of this unwarranted disparity, with the remainder due to investigators. Unwarranted disparity is concentrated in cases with potential for future maltreatment, suggesting that white children may be harmed by “underplacement” in high-risk situations.