Economics Paper Review: Affirmative Action and Prop. 209

Paper:

The Effect of Banning Affirmative Action on Human Capital Accumulation Prior to College Entry∗ by Kate Antonovics (UCSD Economics Professor) May 15, 2014

Content definition:

1. Affirmative Action:

is the practice of taking race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc. into consideration in order to benefit the underrepresented group according to Google.

2. Proposition 209:

is that “prohibited public universities in California from practicing race-based affirmative action, on both the SAT scores and high school GPA of college-bound high school students” according to the paper.

Data Source:

College Board

Context and Founding:

The regression they run is the following:

The Effect of Banning Affirmative Action on Human Capital Accumulation Prior to College Entry∗ by Kate Antonovics (UCSD Economics Professor) May 15, 2014

Where:

Outcome = the outcome (SAT score or high school GPA) for student i in state s in year t

Post = an indicator for whether the affirmative action ban was in place in state s in year t

CAs = an indicator for whether the student resides in California

URM = an indicator for an individual’s race

X = controls for parental income, education, gender, whether English is the student’s first language and citizenship status.

Founding:

1. SAT scores and high school GPA changed very little after the ban on the race-based affirmative action.

2. the end of race-based affirmative action at the UC did not have any sizable impact on academic achievement prior to college entry.

3. There is no evidence that either the black-white SAT score gap or the black-white high school GPA gap widened in California after Prop 209, and although there is some evidence that the Hispanic-white SAT gap grew, we find a simultaneous narrowing of the Hispanic-white high school GPA gap.

4. Moreover, the magnitude of these changes is generally very small. A finding of no effect is consistent with several previous studies that have shown a lack of a response to Prop 209 in terms of both application behavior and enrollment behavior.

Technique:

1. Diff-in Diff comparing California to other States

2. Triple-diff: how the racial gap in these measures changed in California relative to other states

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Diff-in-diff is the god in Economics research. It is very powerful because it can:

I. estimate things even though it is not the perfect randomized experiment

II. estimate the effect on one particular policy or program

It is also very easy to use: data before – after implementing the policy. Then, You get the result.

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Personal Comment:

As most of the college admission evaluate test score performance very much, the most fundamental difference is the education opportunities difference in different racial culture. Academic performance is also based on racial culture. Therefore, more subsidy and support for minority group since early childhood education can help with later educational achievement and prepare better for the college education. This can also eliminate the racial difference in college admission.

Prop 209’s Voting pattern was very interesting and will be presented in future blogs.

Reference:

https://econweb.ucsd.edu/~kantonov/effort_writeup_plain.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_209#cite_note-15