Comparing Barbershop Inspection Outcomes in Alabama and Mississippi

IJ obtained inspection data from the boards responsible for licensing barbers in Alabama and Mississippi. The full dataset for Alabama and Mississippi includes 3,218 inspections across 1,748 firms for the years 2014 through 2018. Figure 7 illustrates the geographic location of inspections. As in Figure 6, the dots’ color represents the distance to the border between the states, with inspections of businesses closer to the border receiving greater weight. During the years analyzed, licensure was required in both Alabama and Mississippi, but the amount of schooling hours required to obtain licensure was 50% higher in Mississippi.

The barbershop inspections data IJ received from Mississippi are comparable in detail to the nail salon inspections data IJ received from Connecticut and New York. However, the barbershop inspections data IJ received from Alabama are less detailed. Specifically, the Alabama data indicate only whether an inspection was passed or failed. I therefore could not compare the number of health and safety violations across Alabama and Mississippi. Instead, I examined whether inspections were more likely to be passed in Mississippi compared to in Alabama. To make outcomes in Mississippi comparable to those in Alabama, I treated inspection grades of an A or a B as a pass and grades of a C as a fail, which, as described above, is consistent with how the grades are treated in the state.

Figure 7. Locations of Alabama and Mississippi Barbershop Inspections

The analysis weights barbershops closer to the border more heavily, as they, and the locations in which they operate, are assumed to be more similar

Miles to the Alabama/Mississippi Border 100 50 150

I followed a similar analytical process for the comparisons of barbershop inspection outcomes in Alabama and Mississippi as for the comparisons of nail salon inspection outcomes in Connecticut and New York. That is, I started with descriptive comparisons of barbershop inspections throughout the whole of each state and then restricted to barbershops within the bandwidth around the border, before conducting a regression discontinuity analysis and performing tests to evaluate the design. There were some minor differences, however. For example, there was only one outcome variable, and it was binary (inspections passed or failed).

For full details of my methods, see Appendix A, and for full details of my results, see Appendix B.