Racial and gender discrimination in Singapore’s rental housing market : an empirical study.

Abstract

This paper examines the occurrence of discrimination on racial and gender bases in the Singapore rental housing market. The procedure involved using owner preferences provided on internet property listings to measure the incidence of discrimination. We also investigated the effect of owner preferences on the price of rental units. Our findings indicate gender discrimination in favour of female applicants exists in the form of differential availability of housing units but without differential rental price. Our results however, do not provide evidence on any prevailing racial discrimination.