Working Paper: NBER ID: w21232
Authors: Dario Cestau; Dennis Epple; Holger Sieg
Abstract: For decades, colleges and universities have struggled to increase participation of minority and disadvantaged students. Urban school districts confront a parallel challenge; minority and disadvantaged students are underrepresented in selective programs that use merit-based admission. In their referral and admission policies to such selective programs, school districts may potentially set different admission thresholds based on income and race (affirmative action), and they may potentially take account of differences in achievement relative to ability across race and income groups (profiling). We develop an econometric model that provides a unified treatment of affirmative action and profiling. Implementing the model for an urban district, we find profiling by race and income, and affirmative action for low-income students. Counterfactual analysis reveals that these policies achieve more than 80% of African American enrollment that could be attained by race-based affirmative action.
Keywords: merit profiling; affirmative action; selective education; minority enrollment; educational policy
JEL Codes: I20
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| profiling by race and income, alongside affirmative action for low-income students (I24) | African American enrollment (I24) |
| referral and admission policies based on free or reduced-price lunch (FRL) status (I24) | minority participation (J15) |
| strict merit-based policies (J78) | size and composition of the program (C88) |
| affirmative action based on race alone (J78) | minority participation (J15) |