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Promoting Educational Opportunities: Long-run Implications of Affirmative Action in College Admissions

Author

Listed:
  • Joao Ramos

    (University of Southern California)

  • Bernard Herskovic

    (UCLA Anderson School of Management)

Abstract

This paper investigates the implications of affirmative action in college admissions for welfare, aggregate output, educational investment decisions and intergenerational persistence of earnings. We construct an overlapping-generations model in which parents choose how much to invest in their child's education, thereby increasing both human capital and likelihood of college admission. Affirmative action improves the pool of admitted students, although it changes incentives towards educational investments. We calibrate the model to quantify affirmative action long-run effects. We find that affirmative action targeting the bottom quintile of the income distribution is a powerful policy to reduce intergenerational persistence of earnings and improve welfare and aggregate output.

Suggested Citation

  • Joao Ramos & Bernard Herskovic, 2017. "Promoting Educational Opportunities: Long-run Implications of Affirmative Action in College Admissions," 2017 Meeting Papers 1552, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    • Handle: RePEc:red:sed017:1552
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Del Rey Elena & Estevan Fernanda, 2020. "Assessing Higher Education Policy in Brazil: A Mixed Oligopoly Approach," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 20(1), pages 1-16, January.
    2. Michèle Müller-Itten & Aniko Ory, 2017. "Mentoring and the Dynamics of Affirmative Action," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 3012, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    3. Brotherhood, Luiz & Delalibera, Bruno R., 2020. "Minding the gap between schools and universities," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    4. Michèle Müller-Itten & Aniko Öry, 2022. "Mentoring and the Dynamics of Affirmative Action," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 14(2), pages 402-444, May.

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