scholarly journals Affirmative Action: One Size Does Not Fit All

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kala Krishna ◽  
Alexander Tarasov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Selection Effect ◽  
The United States ◽  
Educational Access ◽  
Unequal Treatment ◽  
Effort Effect

This paper identifies a new reason for giving preferences to the disadvantaged using a model of contests. There are two forces at work: the effort effect working against giving preferences and the selection effect working in favor of them. When education is costly and easy to obtain (as in the United States), the selection effect dominates. When education is heavily subsidized and limited in supply (as in India), preferences are welfare reducing. The model also shows that unequal treatment of identical agents can be welfare improving, providing insights into when the counterintuitive policy of rationing educational access to some subgroups is welfare improving. (JEL H52, H75, I23, I28, J15, O15)

MR. SECRETARY, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 441-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florent de Bodman ◽  
Pamela R. Bennett
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Postsecondary Education ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The United States ◽  
Housing Program ◽  
Fair Housing Act ◽  
Systemic Discrimination ◽  
Socioeconomic Consequences

AbstractRacial segregation has been a persistent feature of the American social landscape and a longstanding contributor to racial inequality, particularly between Blacks and Whites. Affirmative action policies have been used to address the systemic discrimination and attendant socioeconomic consequences to which African Americans have been subjected. Yet affirmative action has not been widely used in all domains in which segregation and systemic discrimination occurred. Although such policies have been adopted in the domains of employment and postsecondary education, few federal affirmative action programs have been used in housing. This is surprising given high levels of segregation across the metropolitan United States, as well as the stated integrative objectives of the U.S. Congress when it passed the Fair Housing Act of1968. To understand this puzzle, we use the Gautreaux Assisted Housing Program, a housing mobility effort of the Federal government and the Chicago Housing Authority that used explicit racial criteria, as a surrogate for affirmative action in housing more broadly. We conduct a comparative analysis of Gautreaux and affirmative action in college admissions using insights from applied political philosophy and sociology. By confronting Gautreaux with a more traditional affirmative action program, we are able to identify and compare the judicial, moral, and instrumental justifications for each, enabling us to draw conclusions about whether and how affirmative action can justifiably be used on a large scale to reduce neighborhood segregation, the possible forms it could take, and the difficulties it would face. We close with a discussion of the recent shift toward integration taken by the Department of Housing and Urban Development under the Obama administration, its relationship to affirmative action, and its implications for declines in residential segregation in the United States.

Moral and Instrumental Rationales for Affirmative Action in Five National Contexts

2010 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 211-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele S. Moses
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Affirmative Action ◽  
News Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
State Legislation ◽  
The Social

The author’s primary aims are to clarify the differing rationales for affirmative action that have emerged in five nations—France, India, South Africa, the United States, and Brazil—and to make the case for the most compelling rationales, whether instrumentally or morally based. She examines the different social contexts surrounding the establishment and public discussion of each nation’s policy. Next, she examines four justifications for affirmative action in these nations: remediation, economics, diversity, and social justice. She offers philosophical analysis of the justifications for affirmative action in each country and synthesizes federal and state legislation, court decisions, news media sources, and research-based scholarship. She argues that the social justice rationale ought to be invoked more centrally, underscoring affirmative action’s role in fostering a democratic society.

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