Brief Announcement: On Effective Affirmative Action in School Choice

Abstract

AbstractThe purpose of affirmative action in school choice is to create a more equal and diverse social environment, i.e., granting students from disadvantaged social groups preferential treatments in school admission decisions to maintain racial, ethnic or socioeconomic balance. Recent evidences from both academia and practice, however, indicate that implementing affirmative action policies in school choice problems may induce substantial welfare loss on the purported beneficiaries (i.e., minority students). Using the minority reserve policy in the student optimal stable mechanism as an example, this paper addresses the following two questions: what are the causes of such perverse consequence, and when we can effectively implement affirmative action policies without unsatisfied outcomes.KeywordsStable MechanismLower PriorityMinimal RequirementAffirmative ActionMinority StudentThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.