ABSTRACT
We examine changes in the nature and rate of complaints filed
with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in the past 35 years.
The EEOC’s role has shifted over this period from ensuring job access for
racial minorities to providing diverse protections for a much broader class of
incumbent workers. We first describe trends in discrimination complaints, most
notably the shift from racial discrimination to other bases of discrimination,
and develop a conceptual model of choice among socially structured alternatives
to account for them. We then test the model with a time series analysis of
changes in the complaint rate among different worker groups to evaluate the
relative importance of legal, political, and socioeconomic determinants of
civil rights complaints. Net of changes in the political climate, benefit
compensation, inequality, and education levels, we find that legal changes and
group-specific unemployment rates are the strongest and most consistent
determinants of the rate of race, sex, and total discrimination complaints. Our
results suggest that people will bear the costs of filing a complaint when
legal options are relatively attractive and when employment options on the
external labor market are unattractive.