Effective Affirmative Action in School Choice

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The prevalent affirmative action policy in school choice limits the number of admitted majority students to give minority students higher chances to attend their desired schools. There have been numerous efforts to reconcile affirmative action policies with celebrated matching mechanisms such as the deferred acceptance and top trading cycles algorithms. Nevertheless, it is theoretically shown that under these algorithms, the policy based on majority quotas may be detrimental to minorities. Using simulations, we find that this is a more common phenomenon rather than a peculiarity. To circumvent the inefficiency caused by majority quotas, we offer a different interpretation of the affirmative action policies based on minority reserves. With minority reserves, schools give higher priority to minority students up to the point that the minorities fill the reserves. We compare the welfare effects of these policies. The deferred acceptance algorithm with minority reserves Pareto dominates the one with majority quotas. Our simulations, which allow for correlations between student preferences and school priorities, indicate that minorities are, on average, better off with minority reserves while adverse effects on majorities are mitigated. Terms of use: Documents in

School choice with controlled choice constraints: Hard bounds versus soft bounds

“…Although there is a large literature in education evaluating and estimating the effects of segregation across schools on students' achievements (Hanushek, Kain, and Rivkin (2002), Guryan (2004), Card and Rothstein (2005), and others), 23 and on how to measure segregation and how to determine optimal desegregation guidelines, 24 none of these papers discusses the problem of how in practice to assign students to schools while complying with these desegregation guidelines. This is exactly what the first part of our paper does.…”

“…An example showing the contrary is available from the authors. 23 We will refer the interested reader to Echenique, Fryer, and Kaufman (2006) for an illuminating account of this literature. 24 School segregation can be purely racial or, as in Echenique, Fryer and Kaufman (2006), school segregation is measured according to the spectral segregation index of Echenique and Fryer (2006) which uses the intensity of social interactions among the members of a group (see also Cutler and Glaeser (1997)).…”

“…He investigates the consequences of such affirmative action policies and shows that these policies may hurt minority students, the purported beneficiaries. To overcome this shortcoming, Hafalir, Yenmez and Yildirim (2011) propose affirmative action with minority reserves in which schools give higher priority to minority students up to the point that the minorities fill the reserves. They consider both deferred acceptance and top trading cycles algorithms.…”

Efficiency and fair access in Kindergarten allocation policy design

“…It can be done by allocating the places for siblings first and then the remaining seats or in reverse. Dur et al (2013) showed that the reverse approach can benefit children with siblings, and Hafalir et al (2013) showed that reserving places for a certain minority results in a better allocation for the minority than limiting the quota for the majority does. Under the latter policy, both groups (minority and majority) could be worse off.…”

The Structure of Priority in the School Choice Problem

“…These constraints usually take the form of lower or upper limits for students in particular ethnic, racial or socio-economic groups. For analysis of controlled school choice problems see, for example, Kojima (2012), Hafalir, Yenmez and Yildirim (2013) and Ehlers et al (2014). When the number of students at each school is exactly one then quotas and other limits intended to ensure diversity clearly do not apply.…”