Authors: Helen X. H. Bao, Nicholas Ying-Shuen Tan
Year: 2026
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Abstract
Discrimination at the inquiry stage shapes access to rental housing. Existing correspondence studies focus on ethnic-minority status and typically treat foreignness as a secondary attribute, often proxied by signals that also convey ethnicity. This paper isolates foreignness as a distinct source of differential treatment. We conduct a correspondence experiment in Singapore, where the ethnic majority includes both citizens and foreign nationals, and send 3,300 inquiries to 1,500 letting agents. Foreign applicants face a substantial reduction in the probability of receiving a response, with an odds ratio of 0.71. The effect operates in two layers. Foreignness compounds disadvantage for ethnic-minority applicants, and it also generates differential treatment within the ethnic majority, with British Chinese applicants receiving fewer responses than Singaporean Chinese applicants. A multinomial specification shows that the effect operates through nonresponse rather than explicit refusal. The results indicate that foreignness is a distinct and quantitatively important dimension of housing discrimination.