There are several countries who have responded to concerns regarding historically disadvantaged groups, particularly ethnic and racial minorities and women, with not only anti-discrimination legislation, but also affirmative action policies. Although these policies are seemingly well...

We study the effect of affirmative action on effort in an experiment conducted in high schools in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas in Queensland, Australia. All participating schools have a large representation of indigenous Australians, a population group that is frequently targeted by...

This paper investigates the net impact of birth control policy in China on educational attainment of the partially excluded ethnic minorities. Exploring county-level variation in the value of fines levied for unsanctioned births, we show that more stringent enforcement of the birth control...

Research on caste-based inequalities in India has generally focused on differences between large categories such as the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes, and the remainder of the population. We contribute to the literature on horizontal inequalities in India by looking within these...

We investigate whether there are racial and ethnic disparities in children's education in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Viet Nam. We find that in all the four countries, and especially in Viet Nam, children from small ethnic groups have lower education attainment and cognitive ability. The gap in...

This paper investigates inequalities across the major black ethnic groups in South Africa, accounting for 80 per cent of the country's population. We demonstrate that there is an important ethnic gap in the poverty levels of the Xhosa and the Zulu with respect to the Sotho/Tswana. We also show...

A large body of recent quantitative work on the 'diversity detriment' hypothesis finds that ethno-religious diversity is linked with a host of societal ills, implying in turn a strong challenge to multiculturalist theory and policies. Given the stakes, the appropriate conceptualization and...

We assess the relative importance of statistical residual-based measures of discrimination in determining indigenous Australians' perceptions of discrimination in the labour market. We find that statistical measures are largely unrelated to discrimination reports among males and negatively...

Affirmative action in higher education may lead to mismatch, a situation where students benefiting from preferential admission struggle with their college-level work because of poor precollege academic preparation. In the United States, those students can switch majors if they underperform in...

This paper provides a broad overview of the meaning of affirmative action and its intended and unintended impacts. The paper is a literature review and does not make any arguments specifically for or against affirmative action but describes the broad arguments and findings in the existing...