Category Archives: affirmative action

So have reservations helped?

11 Monday Jul 2016

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In case you missed, The Hindu got a whiff of an article from American Economic Review about the effectiveness of affirmative action in India and the American Economics Association (AEA) got a whiff about this in return:

Here is the link to the original news feature from AEA web-portal that links the article in The Hindu as well as the original research article: https://www.aeaweb.org/news/the-hindu-june-8-2016

In case you are curious: reservations do seem to work in terms of providing access to education opportunities to the disadvantaged castes students and women. But there is more to it than just that:

Despite the presence of a beneficial affirmative action program, we find large gaps in pre-college preparation, college participation, and college academic performance between the most disadvantaged castes and their more advantaged counterparts. The gaps in participation rates are magnified for women, especially for women from the
most disadvantaged castes. Our work also indicates why affirmative action policies generate debate; we find that improved educational outcomes for targeted students come at a cost to those who do not receive preferential treatment.

Economics of Affirmative Action!

08 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by in affirmative action, socioeconomic perspectives

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Looks like affirmative action in higher education in India does work in reducing inequities in access to higher education. However, as suspected it does so at the cost of having less number of open category students being admitted. Clearly the solution lies in the problem- increase the number of higher education institutions. But we have experienced a continuous decline in planned allocation spending on university and higher education over the subsequent five year plans.

Here is the link to the article from AER: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20140783

and to the article in the Hindu that is based partially on the above article: http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article8701809.ece

 

Convergence across Castes

11 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by in affirmative action, socioeconomic perspectives

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Abstract:

Over the past 25 years there has been a remarkable economic catch-up by scheduled castes and tribes (SC/STs) towards non-SC/ST levels in the terms of their education attainment levels, their occupation choices as well as wage and consumption levels. This is remarkable given the centuries of socio-economic deprivation faced by these backward castes. In this paper we Örst document these facts and then examine the relative contributions of di§erent factors, in particular, aggregate and sectoral shocks, toward this catch-up. We then develop a multi-sector model with the two types of agents to show that aggregate TFP shocks can induce a convergence between the two groups without any other concurrent redistributive policy changes as long as there exists an initial policy of education subsidies for the relatively disadvantaged group.

link: http://econ.la.psu.edu/papers/Lahiri102611.pdf

Affirmative Action in Education

23 Wednesday Apr 2008

Posted by in affirmative action, education, socioeconomic perspectives

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Abstract:

Many countries mandate affirmative action in university admissions for traditionally disadvantaged groups. Little is known about either the efficacy or costs of these programs. This paper examines affirmative action in engineering colleges in India for “lower-caste” groups. We find that it successfully targets the financially disadvantaged: the marginal upper-caste applicant comes from a more advantaged background than the marginal lower-caste applicant who displaces him. Despite much lower entrance exam scores, the marginal lower-caste entrant does benefit: we find a strong, positive economic return to admission. These findings contradict common arguments against affirmative action: that it is only relevant for richer lower-caste members, or that those who are admitted are too unprepared to benefit from the education. However, these benefits come at a cost. Our point estimates suggest that the marginal upper-caste entrant enjoys nearly twice the earnings level gain as the marginal lower-caste entrant. This finding illustrates the program’s redistributive nature: it benefits the poor, but costs resources in absolute terms. One reason for this lower level gain is that a smaller fraction of lower-caste admits end up employed in engineering or advanced technical jobs. Finally, we find no evidence that the marginal upper-caste applicant who is rejected due to the policy ends up with more negative attitudes towards lower castes or towards affirmative action programs. On the other hand, there is some weak evidence that the marginal lower-caste admits become stronger supporters of affirmative action programs.

Reference:

Bertrand M, Hanna R, & Mullainathan S (2008), Affirmative Action in Education: Evidence From Engineering College Admissions in India, NBER Working Paper 13926.

Women as Policy Makers

08 Tuesday Apr 2008

Posted by in affirmative action, socioeconomic perspectives

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I am sure many of us must have watched movies where the theme was women’s reservation. Though, most of them turn out to be a ‘cliche’, they at least bring out the complexities involved in implementing such policies. One can also occasionally find journalistic write ups on the issue. However, all said and done, most of these articles turn out to be anecdotal at best and unfortunately movies cannot constitute any substantive evidence either! This is where this article becomes important.

Do reservations for women at the Panchayat level work? This is the focus of the article. The authors use political reservations for women in India to study the impact of women’s leadership on policy decisions. They use data collected from 256 village councils from West Bengal and Rajasthan and compare the type of public goods provided in reserved and unreserved village councils.

The authors find that women elected as leaders under the reservation policy invest more in the public goods more closely related to women’s concerns: drinking water and roads in West Bengal and drinking water in Rajasthan. They invest less in public goods that are more closely linked to men’s concerns: education in West Bengal and roads in Rajasthan. These results seem to largely attributable to the gender of the Pradhan as they are unaffected by other characteristics of Pradhan.

According to the authors, these results contradict the simple intuition behind the Downsian model and the idea that political decisions are the outcomes of a Coasian bargaining process. In both of these views of the world, the fact that a woman is the head of the Gram Panchayat should not influence policy decisions. These results also suggest that direct manipulation of the identity of the policy maker can have important effects on policy.

It will be interesting to carry out similar type of analysis in other states and see what emerges. This is a very pertinent issue, not only from the point of view of gender empowerment but as noted by authors, also from the design of decentralized political institutions and their efficacy point of view.

Reference:
Chattopadhyay R & Duflo E (2004), “Women as Policy Makers: Evidence from a Randomized Policy Experiment in India”, Econometrica, 72, 5, 1409-1443.