Affirmative Action and Racial Segregation

Abstract

Prior research suggests that statewide affirmative action bans reduce minority enrollment at selective colleges while leaving overall minority college enrollment unchanged. However, the effect of these bans on across-college racial segregation has not yet been estimated. This effect is theoretically ambiguous due to a U-shaped relationship across colleges between minority enrollment and college selectivity. This paper uses variation in the timing of affirmative action bans across states to estimate their effects on racial segregation as measured by standard exposure and dissimilarity indexes, finding that affirmative action bans have increased segregation across colleges in some cases but reduced it in others. In particular, early affirmative action bans in states with highly selective public universities appear to be associated with less segregation, whereas more recent affirmative action bans appear to be associated with more segregation.

The Anti-Affirmative Action Avalanche: The Rise of Underrepresented Minority Enrollment at For-Profit Institutions

“…The results of this study are weighted by enrollment and unweighted. The weights are equal to the total number of enrolled students at a given institution (Afifi, May, and Clark 2003;Backes 2012;Garces and Mickey-Pabello 2015;Hill 2017;Hinrichs 2012Hinrichs , 2014Hinrichs , 2020Mickey-Pabello and Garces 2018). The analysis weighted by enrollment yields results concerning a typical student; the unweighted analysis yields results that reflect the typical school.…”

A STEM Penalty from Affirmative Action Bans?

“…Although this mismatch position is popular among conservatives and some academics, the overwhelming empirical evidence finds that affirmative action is not only beneficial for underrepresented minority students (Alon, 2009(Alon, , 2015Alon & Tienda, 2005, 2007Backes, 2012;Bowen & Bok, 2016;Hinrichs, 2012Hinrichs, , 2014Hinrichs, , 2020Orfield, 2001), but that racial diversity is beneficial to the various groups that experience it, and the organizations that attain it (Guinier, 2015;Gurin & Nagda, 2006;Gurin et al, 2002Gurin et al, , 2003Gurin et al, , 2004aGurin et al, , 2004bHong & Page, 2004;Hurtado et al, 2003;Miller & Page, 2009;Page, 2008Page, , 2010.…”

What the Students for Fair Admissions Cases Reveal about Racial Preferences

“…11 In addition to conventional data on high school grades and standardized test scores, each dataset contains extensive information on other applicant characteristics, as well as admissions o cers' ratings of the applicant on academic and non-academic dimensions. Being able to observe these ratings is what separates the quality of our data from what has been used in existing work on this topic (Espenshade, Chung, and Walling, 2004;Antonovics and Backes, 2014;Arcidiacono, Aucejo, and Hotz, 2016;Hinrichs, 2020). 12 It is important to note that we no longer have direct access to either of these datasets.…”