Our Seminars & Workshops

Title: The incidence of affirmative action: Evidence from quotas in private schools in India (with Maricio Romero)

Abstract: The incidence of redistributive policies is central to whether they meet their stated goals. We study this in the context of one of the world's largest programs to improve social equity in schooling: a 25% quota in all Indian private schools for students from disadvantaged groups. We use lottery-based estimates to show that, although students admitted under the quota attend more expensive and preferred schools on average, the distribution of program benefits is very regressive. Program applicants are concentrated among more-educated and better-off households. Consequently, 7.4% of the program spending accrues to the bottom socioeconomic quintile, compared to 24.3% to the top quintile. We use rich survey data to show that low application rates for poorer children are not driven by preferences and beliefs. Instead, information constraints and application frictions appear to be key. Finally, we use a randomized intervention to confirm the importance of these frictions and further demonstrate that alleviating a single constraint (e.g., information) may not reduce regressive selection, even if it boosts application rates substantially. Our results demonstrate how constraints facing potential applicants can make redistributive policies regressive in practice. Appropriate policy interventions must consider the joint incidence of these constraints to reduce regressivity.