Affirmative Action and Racial Segregation

Peter Hinrichs

Journal of Law and Economics, 2020, vol. 63, issue 2, 239 - 267

Abstract: Prior research suggests that statewide affirmative action bans reduce minority enrollment at selective colleges while leaving the overall college enrollment of minorities unchanged. However, the effect of these bans on across-college racial segregation has not yet been estimated. This effect is theoretically ambiguous because of 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 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.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/706930 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/706930 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
Working Paper: Affirmative Action and Racial Segregation (2019)
Working Paper: Affirmative Action and Racial Segregation (2016)
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:ucp:jlawec:doi:10.1086/706930

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Law and Economics from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().