Who Is in Favor of Affirmative Action? Representative Evidence from an Experiment and a Survey

Arbeitspapier

Although affirmative action remains controversial, little is known about who supports or opposes it and why. This paper investigates preferences for affirmative action by combining causal evidence from an experiment on the role of self-serving motives and in-group favoritism with survey data on three different affirmative action policies. Our results rely on a population-representative sample from the US. We find that support for affirmative action is based both on self-serving motives and principled grounds (e.g., related to an individual's altruism, fairness perceptions, concerns for efficiency, and political views). By contrast, in-group favouritism and socio-demographic characteristics play a much smaller role.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 10822

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Design of Experiments: Other ; Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles ; Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement ; Labor Discrimination: Public Policy
• Subject: support for affirmative action ; self-serving motives ; in-group favoritism ; altruism ; efficiency ; fairness ; discrimination

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Herzog, Sabrina ; Schildberg-Hörisch, Hannah ; Trieu, Chi ; Willrodt, Jana
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
• (where): Munich
• (when): 2023

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/282510
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET