Centralized admission systems and school segregation: Evidence from a national reform

Macarena Kutscher, Shanjukta Nath and Sergio Urzua

Journal of Public Economics, 2023, vol. 221, issue C

Abstract: This paper investigates whether the adoption of centralized school admission systems can alter within-school socio-economic diversity relative to decentralized settings. We take advantage of the largest school-admission reform implemented to date: Chile’s SAS, which in 2016 replaced the country’s decentralized system with a Deferred Acceptance algorithm. We exploit its sequential introduction across regions to quantify its heterogeneous impact on segregation. The empirical analysis is carried out using administrative data and a Difference-in-Difference strategy. Our findings do not suggest an overall improvement in the representation of low-SES students across schools. SAS, however, increased within-school segregation in districts with high levels of pre-existing residential segregation or an extensive presence of private schools. The migration of high-SES students attending publicly funded schools to private institutions emerges as a potential driver.

Keywords: Education; Segregation; Mechanism design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 I24 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272723000452
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Centralized Admission Systems and School Segregation: Evidence from a National Reform (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:221:y:2023:i:c:s0047272723000452

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2023.104863

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Public Economics is currently edited by R. Boadway and J. Poterba

More articles in Journal of Public Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().