Color-Blind Affirmative Action

This paper presents a conceptual framework for understanding the consequences of the widespread adoption of “race-neutral alternatives” to conventional racial affirmative action policies in college admissions. A simple model of applicant competition with endogenous effort is utilized to show that, in comparison to color-conscious affirmative action, these color-blind alternatives can significantly lower the efficiency of the student selection process in equilibrium. We examine data on matriculates at several selective colleges and universities to estimate the magnitudes involved. It is shown that the short-run efficiency losses of implementing color-blind affirmative action (in our sample) are four to five times as high as color-conscious affirmative action. ∗We are grateful to Lawrence Katz, Kevin Lang, Steven Levitt, and Debraj Ray for helpful comments and suggestions. We also thank seminar participants at Boston University, Cornell, MacArthur’s Social Interactions and Inequality Network, and New York University. Fryer is at the Harvard Society of Fellows and NBER, Littauer Center, Harvard University, Cambridge MA 02138 (e-mail: [email protected]); Loury is at the Department of Economics, Boston University, 270 Bay State Road, Boston MA 02215 (e-mail [email protected]); and Yuret is at the Department of Economics, Boston University (e-mail: [email protected]). Financial support is gratefully acknowledged from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation.