Are Affirmative Action Hires Less Qualified? Evidence from Employer-Employee Data on New Hires

No 5603, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: In this paper we use micro-level data on employers and employees to investigate whether Affirmative Action procedures lead firms to hire minority or female employees who are less qualified than workers who might otherwise be hired. Our measures of qualifications include the educational attainment of the workers hired (both absolutely and relative to job requirements), skill requirements of the job into which they are hired, and a variety of outcome measures that are presumably related to worker performance on the job. The analysis is based on a representative sample of over 3,200 employers in four major metropolitan areas in the U.S. Our results show some evidence of lower educational qualifications among blacks and Hispanics hired under Affirmative Action, but not among white women. Further, our results show little evidence of substantially weaker job performance among most groups of minority and female Affirmative Action hires.

JEL-codes: J15 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1996-06
Note: LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published as Journal of Labor Economics, Vol. 17, no. 3 (July 1999): 534-569

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Journal Article: Are Affirmative Action Hires Less Qualified? Evidence from Employer-Employee Data on New Hires (1999)
Working Paper: Are affirmative action hires less qualified? Evidence from employer-employee data on new hires
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