Spillovers in Affirmative Action: Evidence from OBC Quotas in India

Abstract

This paper empirically investigates if making access to college easier with affirmative action can incentivize students to continue enrolment in secondary school and complete high-school. In 2008, the central government in India implemented the legislation for 27 percent of seats to be reserved for Other Backward Classes (OBC), a disadvantaged caste-group, in all colleges funded by the central government. Exploiting the quasi-experimental nature of this policy, I use a difference-in-differences (DID) empirical strategy to estimate the differential effects on schooling outcomes of OBC students as compared to other social groups. The results show that college enrolments for OBC increased by an additional 2.9 percentage points more than the comparison groups, and high-school completion rates increased by an additional 5.1 percentage points. There was a significant differential change in school enrolments of 6.2 percentage points for 15-17 year olds, and of 2.1 percentage points for 13-15 year olds, and no statistically significant difference for younger students enrolled below the secondary level. These estimates are consistently higher in the urban sample for all outcomes evaluated.

Keywords: Affirmative Action, Caste, Other Backward Classes (OBC), OBC quota

JEL Classification: I23, I28, J15, O15, D04