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Title: Affirmative Action, Major Choice, and Long-Run Impacts
Citation Type: Working Paper
Publication Year: 2019
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ISSN: 1556-5068
DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3484530
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Abstract: Prior studies of the medium-run outcomes of universities' race-based affirmative action (AA) policies have been challenged by highly-censored data availability. This study analyzes a novel highly-detailed database of University of California (UC) applications in the years before and after its AA policy ended in 1998, linked to national degree attainment, state earnings records, and five universities' complete student transcripts. It presents two findings estimated using difference-in-difference designs. First, I show that ending AA caused substantial and persistent educational and labor market deterioration among URM UC applicants: each of UC's 10,000 annual URM freshman applicants' likelihood of earning a Bachelor's degree declined by 1.3 percentage points, their likelihood of earning any graduate degree declined 1.4 p.p., and their likelihood of earning at least $100,000 in each year between ages 30 and 37 declined by about 1 p.p. per year. These results imply that affirmative action's end decreased the number of age 30-to-34 URM Californians earning over $100,000 by at least 2.5 percent. Second, I show that ending AA did not improve URM students' relative performance or persistence in core physical, biological, or mathematical science courses, within or across impacted universities. These findings suggest that state prohibitions on university affirmative action policies have modestly exacerbated American socioeconomic inequities.
Url: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3484530
Url: https://www.ssrn.com/abstract=3484530
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Authors: Bleemer, Zachary
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Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Other
Countries: United States