Over the past six decades our political, philosophical and legal approaches to discrimination have evolved, moving from a laissez-faire attitude to complex legislation that addresses both 'direct' and 'indirect' discrimination. Some argue now for the complete abolition of anti-discrimination...

Public higher education institutions in the Philippines have experienced expansions in campuses, programs, and enrollments. Alongside these expansions are challenges that can limit the public higher education institutions' capacity to deliver quality education and ensure the disadvantaged...

The format of this report was established for the 2021 Semester, as part of the work programme of the Commission's European Disability Expertise (EDE) network and building on previous work by the Academic Network of European Disability experts (ANED) project. This updated report provides a...

Under the Right to Education Act (2009), the Indian government introduced a policy that required private schools to reserve 25% of primary school places for children from socially disadvantaged households. This paper examines the impact of the RTE Act's reservation policy on private school...

We develop a model of college major selection in an environment where firms and students have incomplete information about the student's aptitude. Students must choose from a continuum of majors which differ in their human capital production function and can act as a signal to the market....

Affirmative action, or positive discrimination favouring the members of marginalized populations, is a key policy approach to addressing group-based inequalities. It is adopted in dozens of countries around the world in the areas of, for instance, university enrolment, public employment, and...

This paper estimates the long-run impacts of banning affirmative action on men and women from under-represented minority (URM) racial and ethnic groups in the United States. Using data from the US Census and American Community Survey, we use a difference-in-differences framework to compare the...

This paper provides a systematic review of quantitative literature investigating the success of affirmative action (AA) policies in addressing socio-economic inequalities between ethnic groups in education and employment. We focus on two of the most influential national experiences: caste-based...

Despite the good intentions behind affirmative action (AA) policies to mediate 'horizontal inequalities' between ethnic groups, the evidence on their effectiveness remains open to debate. In this study, we conduct a systematic review of the literature with global scope, to add new clarity on...

In Fall 2022, the Supreme Court heard arguments regarding the future of affirmative action in higher education. Initially, affirmative action policies were adopted to give equal opportunity to communities who have been and continue to be harmed by discriminatory systems and practices. As we wait...

Successive decentralized policy makers must decide whether to implement an affirmative action policy aimed at improving the performance distribution of future generations of a targeted group. Employers do not observe district by district whether workers benefited from affirmative action, but...

In recent years, many states in the U.S. have banned race-based affirmative action in college admissions, with public universities in these states using a variety of methods to ensure a diverse student body without the explicit consideration of race, such as poverty preferences, in admissions....

Despite gains in female representation in early career stages, large gender gaps persist at the higher ends of the income distribution. This paper uses an experiment to study how the dynamics of affirmative action may limit the extent to which its initial benefits extend throughout the career...

We examine the effects of an affirmative action policy at an elite Brazilian university that reserved 45 percent of admission slots for Black and low-income students. We find that marginally-admitted students who enrolled through the affirmative action tracks experienced a 14 percent increase in...

A number of scholars and civil society actors criticize anti-discrimination law arguing that it neglects the fundamental problem of socio-economic inequalities and rests on an overly narrow notion of equality compared to the one underlying classic (re)distributive policies. This chapter...

We study racial diversity in American law schools and the impact of state-level bans on affirmative action. To do this, we assembled data on the number of students by minority status at every ABA-approved law school from 1980 to 2021. During this time, the share of minority law students tripled...

Affirmative action in higher education can lead to mismatch, where students admitted through preferential treatment struggle academically due to inadequate preparation before college. Although some students may face initial challenges, by providing access to quality education for talented...

Although affirmative action remains controversial, little is known about who supports or opposes it and why. This paper investigates preferences for affirmative action by combining causal evidence from an experiment on the role of self-serving motives and in-group favoritism with survey data on...

A main goal of affirmative action (AA) policies is to enable disadvantaged groups to compete with their privileged counterparts. Existing theoretical and empirical research documents that incorporating AA can result in both more egalitarian outcomes and higher exerted efforts. However, the...

Although affirmative action remains controversial, little is known about who supports or opposes it and why. This paper investigates preferences for affirmative action by combining causal evidence from an experiment on the role of self-serving motives and in-group favoritism with survey data on...

Although affirmative action remains controversial, little is known about who supports or opposes it and why. This paper investigates preferences for affirmative action by combining causal evidence from an experiment on the role of self-serving motives and in-group favoritism with survey data on...

In the 1960s, two landmark statutes - the Equal Pay and Civil Rights Acts - targeted the long-standing practice of employment discrimination against U.S. women. For the next 15 years, the gender gap in median earnings among full-time, full-year workers changed little, leading many scholars to...