This chapter surveys the theoretical literature on statistical discrimination and affirmative action. This literature suggests different explanations for the existence and persistence of group inequality. This survey highlights such differences and describes in these contexts the effects of...

Affirmative action schemes must confront the tension between admitting the highest scoring applicants and ensuring diversity. In Chicago's affirmative action system for exam schools, applicants are divided into one of four socioeconomic tiers based on the characteristics of their neighborhood....

Social progress through improved treatment of minority groups (the embrace of anti-racist and anti-sexist norms, for example) may or may not spread to corporate cultures through competition. Sometimes the market fails to adapt on its own and government must pass legislation to secure changes in...

The Supreme Court has held repeatedly that race-based preferences in public university admissions are constitutional. But debates over the wisdom of affirmative action continue. Opponents of these policies argue that preferences are detrimental to minority students -- that by placing these...

Using Census and CPS data, we show that U.S.-born Mexican Americans who marry non-Mexicans are substantially more educated and English proficient, on average, than are Mexican Americans who marry co-ethnics (whether they be Mexican Americans or Mexican immigrants). In addition, the non-Mexican...

We use a population resettlement program in Indonesia to identify long-run effects of intergroup contact on national integration. In the 1980s, the government relocated two million ethnically diverse migrants into hundreds of new communities. We find greater integration in fractionalized...

This paper uses data from the 1980 and 1990 U.S. Census of Population to examine the English language skills of natives and immigrants. The first main finding is that lack of fluency in spoken English is rare among native- born Americans. In 1990, 98.4 % of natives aged 18 to 64 reported to the...

In this study we examine the importance of assimilation and ethnic enclave residence for smoking outcomes among United States immigrants. We draw data on over 140,000 immigrants from the Current Population Survey Tobacco Use Supplements between 1995 and 2011. Several patterns emerge from our...

Under the urging of late nineteenth-century humanitarian reformers, U.S. policy toward American Indians shifted from removal and relocation efforts to state-sponsored attempts to quot;civilizequot; Indians through allotment of tribal lands, citizenship, and forced education. There is little...

This paper analyzes the extent to which ethnic skill differentials are transmitted across generations. I assume that ethnicity acts as an externality in the human capital accumulation process. The skills of the next generation depend on parental inputs and on the quality of the ethnic...