New Research Shows Quota Helped Bridge Education Gap by 40% | News18 India

An affirmative action in education program in India may have increased educational attainment for underrepresented students. CEGA affiliated professor Gaurav Khanna discusses his research on the program in a recent article by News18.

“Affirmative action for OBCs has helped to bridge the education gap by about 40%. It has incentivised the social minority group to stay in school longer, according to a new study – “Does Affirmative Action Incentivize Schooling? Evidence from India” published in The Review Economics and Statistics Weekly.

It suggests OBC students attain 0.8 additional years of education where affirmative action policies are in place, further confirming what the activists and the advocates of the policy have been saying. The evidence from India reveals underrepresented students stay in school for longer under the affirmative policy.

The author Gaurav Khanna, assistant professor of economics at UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy studied the education outcomes before and after the policy was implemented in 1994.

While non-OBCs were still more likely to pursue more education, wide-scale affirmative action helped bridge the education gap by about 40% over a decade and a half. We know the direct effects of affirmative action and that it impacts college admissions. But the new evidence from India reflected ‘affirmative action has indirect benefits on the behaviour of underrepresented high school students. OBCs tend to stay in school longer because they know higher education is within reach.'”

Source: New Research Shows Quota Helped Bridge Education Gap by 40%, Spurred Students on to Higher Studies