What Promises Are Worth: The Impact of Affirmative Action Goals
Affirmative action goals and timetables for the employment of minorities and females have been criticized by some as being ineffective,and by others as being a system of rigid quotas. Using new data from OFCCP administrative records, this paper estimates the impact of detailed regulatory pressure on goals and on subsequent employment demographics. It also tests for the information content of the goals.While the goals are inflated and are not being fulfilled with the rigidity one might expect of quotas, the establishments that promise to employ more minorities and females do actually employ more in subsequent years. While the detailed enforcement tools of the compliance review process are of doubtful utility, the system of affirmative action goals does appear to have prompted increases in minority and female employment at reviewed establishments.
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
| Length: | |
| Date of creation: | May 1984 |
| Publication status: | published as Leonard, Jonathan S. "What Promises Are Worth: The Impact of Affirmative Action Goals." Journal of Human Resources, Vol. 20, No. 1, (Winter 1985) pp. 3-20. |
| Handle: | RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1346 |
| Note: | LS |
| Contact details of provider: | Postal: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A. Phone: 617-868-3900 Web page: http://www.nber.org Email: More information through EDIRC
|
References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Richard Butler & James J. Heckman, 1977. "The Government's Impact on the Labor Market Status of Black Americans: A Critical Review," NBER Working Papers 0183, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Leonard, Jonathan S, 1984.
"The Impact of Affirmative Action on Employment,"
Journal of Labor Economics,
University of Chicago Press, vol. 2(4), pages 439-463, October.
- Jonathan S. Leonard, 1984. "The Impact of Affirmative Action on Employment," NBER Working Papers 1310, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Orley Ashenfelter & James J. Heckman, 1974. "Measuring the Effect of an Anti-Discrimination Program," NBER Working Papers 0050, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Orley Ashenfelter & James Heckman, 1974. "Measuring the Effect of an Antidiscrimination Program," Working Papers 432, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
- James J. Heckman & Kenneth I. Wolpin, 1976. "Does the Contract Compliance Program Work? An Analysis of Chicago Data," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 29(4), pages 544-564, July.
- Morris Goldstein & Robert S. Smith, 1976. "The Estimated Impact of the Antidiscrimination Program Aimed at Federal Contractors," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 29(4), pages 523-543, July. Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1346. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ()
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.