Is Affirmative Action in Employment Still Effective in the 21st Century?

Noriko Amano-Patiño, Julian Aramburu and Zara Contractor

Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies

Abstract: We study Executive Order 11246, an employment-based affirmative action policy tar geted at firms holding contracts with the federal government. We find this policy to be in effective in the 21st century, contrary to the positive effects found in the late 1900s (Miller, 2017). Our novel dataset combines data on federal contract acquisition and enforcement with US linked employer-employee Census data 2000–2014. We employ an event study around firms’ acquiring a contract, based on Miller (2017), and find the policy had no ef fect on employment shares or on hiring, for any minority group. Next, we isolate the impact of the affirmative action plan, which is EO 11246’s preeminent requirement that applies to firms with contracts over $50,000. Leveraging variation from this threshold in an event study and regression discontinuity design, we find similarly null effects. Last, we show that even randomized audits are not effective, suggesting weak enforcement. Our results highlight the importance of the recent budget increase for the enforcement agency, as well as recent policies enacted to improve compliance

Keywords: Racial discrimination; affirmative action regulation; unemployment; earnings differentials. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J23 J31 J71 J78 K31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 71 pages
Date: 2022-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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