Reputation, Risk, And Race: Exploring Racial And Ethnic Difference In Personal Contact Use And Receipt Of Proactive Assistance

The author used the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality to explore whether and to what extent reputation, measured as spotty work history, job-hopping, and previous incarceration, helps to explain why blacks are less likely than Latinos and whites to find work through personal contacts and why the assistance they do receive from job contacts is less proactive on average. Results reveal that racial differences in reputation are relatively minor, and so these do little to explain why the odds of personal contact use and receipt of proactive assistance are lower among blacks.