Higher education and affirmative action effects: evidence from an elite university in Brazil

• Grant number: 23/10350-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Effective date (Start): January 01, 2024
• Effective date (End): August 31, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Economics
• Principal Investigator: Fernanda Gonçalves de La Fuente Estevan
• Grantee: Gabriel Guimarães Leite
• Supervisor: Philip Oreopoulos
• Host Institution: Escola de Economia de São Paulo (EESP). Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Research place: University of Toronto (U of T), Canada
• Associated to the scholarship: 22/16306-0 - Higher education and affirmative action effects: evidence from an elite university in Brazil, BP.DR

Abstract

This project intends to 1) investigate the long-run effects of higher education selectivity on labor market outcomes of students from different socioeconomic backgrounds; 2) evaluate the effect of affirmative action on future earnings of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of those policies and 3) analyze if targeted students admitted at the university serve as role models to younger peers from the same high school in the following years. To achieve those goals, this project will use a unified dataset, which includes administrative data from UNICAMP, between 1987 and 2020, and formal labor market (RAIS) and shareholding participation data (Brazilian IRS), between 2002 and 2018. To estimate the returns to attending one of the most selective universities in Brazil in the labor market, we will use the regression discontinuity design method to circumvent biases from unobservable variables. This method exploits the identification of admitted and non-admitted candidates around the university admission cutoff. Before the affirmative action policy, we investigate the baseline returns from enrolling in the flagship university at an aggregate level, by socioeconomic characteristics and by type of major. After the introduction of the policy, we evaluate its effects on returns between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries. Lastly, we will use the regression discontinuity approach to investigate if the admission of targeted applicants from high schools without (or few) records of successful applicants increases the demand for university spots among younger and disadvantaged high school peers. Hence, this thesis project aims at testing the hypothesis that access to higher education selectivity increases individual earnings, especially for those with less favorable socioeconomic backgrounds. Besides, we aim to add evidence about a possible spillover of those policies in the Brazilian context. (AU)