When is Affirmative Action Fair? Answers from a Hypothetical Survey Experiment

In this paper, we provide evidence on attitudes toward indirect past-in-present educational discrimination (i.e., educational discrimination that took place in the past but has a negative impact on the current employment opportunities of the discriminated against workers). We use an original vignette-based hypothetical survey experiment and collect data from a representative sample of the US population. We find that a significant majority of respondents support costly compensation for past educational discrimination. Moreover, we find that respondents are as sensitive to indirect past-in-present educational discrimination as they are to present-day employment discrimination. We point out that the causal effects on attitudes are stronger for the intentionality of discrimination than for its financial consequences for the discriminated group. Finally, attitudes appear to be driven more by respondents' political perspective than by their own actual identity.