EPI222_WTR16: Week 6 assignment

Although not intended to be a health policy, affirmative action in higher education settings may have important health implications. Allowing historically underrepresented groups improved opportunities to pursue higher education may directly and indirectly translate to better health outcomes via knowledge, better employment opportunities, higher earnings, etc. Evaluating affirmative action policies is important to ensure that it is not only recruiting but also effectively retaining underrepresented students. With respect to health, understanding HOW education produces better health outcomes (e.g., mediators) continues to be an empirical question.

The populations most affected would be groups that are historically underrepresented in higher education settings, including African Americans, Latinos, American Indians/Natives, etc. One health outcome that immediately comes to mind is tobacco-related diseases, as smoking is a health behavior that shows a strong educational gradient.

In terms of evaluating the policy, the research question is: Does higher education provided via affirmative action policies reduce smoking rates among racial/ethnic minorities? This is a very difficult research question because it would be nearly impossible to identify a sample for which higher education would not be possible without affirmative action (i.e., no comparison group). Race-based affirmative action is currently banned in 8 states, including California. Perhaps we could imagine conducting a prospective study starting with the college admissions process, in which administrators must indicate whether applicants are accepted because of affirmative action policies (in affirmative action states), compared to applicants who are denied because of lack of affirmative action policies (in non-affirmative action states). These individuals are then followed over the course of college and beyond, to track smoking and other health behaviors. To make this study even more difficult to conduct, we need to keep in mind that individuals typically apply to multiple colleges, so being denied admission at one school does not mean that that individual did not attend college elsewhere. Again, it would be very difficult to identify a sample of individuals who could not attend college because of lack of affirmative action.

Re: Week 6 assignment

by Maria Glymour - Tuesday, February 9, 2016, 7:46 AM

Jin, this is an interesting example: most of the research on education and health focuses on relatively crude aspects of education, such as how many years or degrees someone completes. The question of the health impacts of affirmative action presents extra challenges, including that it is difficult to identify the "exposed" and "unexposed" but also that affirmative action may have important spillover effects, i.e., benefit people who were not direct beneficiaries because of role models or social norms achieved via improved diversity in higher education. On the other hand, affirmative action is a social policy that directly adversely affects some individuals, so it is tricky to decide how to evaluate it.

I like your idea of using information on the admissions committee decision. Some universities or states may have hard criteria for eligibility that could be used. I bet there has been some good research on this topic looking at labor market outcomes, such as earnings, so we may be able to find a good design in another field that could be applied to health.

-maria