Evidence Is Scarce That Licensing Improves Quality or Safety

Although proponents say licensing improves service quality and makes the public safer, most available evidence suggests it does not. 1  Notably, several studies, including some on beauty and personal care occupations, have found no substantive relationship between licensing and licensing burdens and service quality as rated by consumers and even practitioners. 2 It seems likely that if harms from unlicensed occupations were widespread, this would be reflected in consumer ratings. However, if these studies speak to health and safety, they do so only indirectly.

Unfortunately, there is little research directly exploring the health and safety effects of occupational licenses and even less directly exploring the health and safety effects of beauty and personal care licenses specifically. 3 As far as I am aware, there is only one. 4 That study, from 2023, looked at historical newspapers and found the adoption of barber licensing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was associated with more cases of barber’s itch—an infection licensing was supposedly necessary to combat—rather than fewer. 5

Comparing inspection outcomes allows for a precise test of the claim that licensing and licensing burdens produce safer and more sanitary service in nail salons and barbershops.

My study builds on this small body of literature by examining how licensing and licensing burdens relate to health and safety with respect to manicurists and barbers through the use of health inspection outcomes. Inspection outcomes offer at least three advantages over consumer ratings as a measure of health and safety. First, they are a more direct measure of health and safety, as inspectors are explicitly tasked with looking for health and safety risks. Consumer ratings, on the other hand, often reflect other dimensions of service quality. Second, inspections are less subjective than consumer ratings. Intuitively, consumers are more likely to rate or review service providers when they have a notably good experience or a notably bad one. Inspectors, meanwhile, are supposed to apply the same standards to every business of a certain type that they inspect. Third, and related to the first two, inspectors are trained. If licensing proponents are right, nail salons and barbershops with unlicensed or less onerously licensed staff should be engaged in less safe practices. This should be apparent to inspectors and reflected in inspection outcomes. Comparing inspection outcomes therefore allows for a precise test of the claim that licensing and licensing burdens produce safer and more sanitary service in nail salons and barbershops. Before describing the study methods, the next sections describe the licensing requirements and inspection systems for manicurists and barbers.