23
Nov
2021
Affirmative Action and the Choice of Schools
with Ursula Mello (Institute for Economic Analysis, and the Barcelona School of Economics
Webinar
Live online event
01:00 pm
02:30 pm
For inquiries:
seminars@liser.lu

Abstract

Affirmative Action and the Choice of Schools
Presenter: Ursula Mello (Institute for Economic Analysis, and the Barcelona School of Economics)

Socioeconomic-based affirmative action in higher education has gained importance following the controversies over their race-based alternatives. In many settings, these interventions use a school-based criterion that selects beneficiaries relative to their peers. Exploiting a nationwide quota policy in Brazil that reserved a large share of vacancies in higher education for public-school students, I show that the reform increases movements from private to public schools by 29% and that movers come disproportionately from low-SES and low-quality private schools. An exploration of the mechanisms shows that switchers increase their future probability of higher education attendance relate to non-switchers, at the expense of attending poorer and lower-performing public schools. Furthermore, the reform also leads to changes in school choice of indirectly exposed cohorts and general-equilibrium effects in the form of school closure.

Supported by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (RESCOM/2021/16537536)

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