Meritocracy and Its Discontents: Long-run Effects of Repeated School Admission Reforms

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Hauptverfasser: Moriguchi, Chiaki, Narita, Yusuke, Tanaka, Mari
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Moriguchi, Chiaki
Narita, Yusuke
Tanaka, Mari
author_facet Moriguchi, Chiaki
Narita, Yusuke
Tanaka, Mari
contents What happens if selective colleges change their admission policies? We study this question by analyzing the world's first implementation of nationally centralized meritocratic admissions in the early twentieth century. We find a persistent meritocracy-equity tradeoff. Compared to the decentralized system, the centralized system admitted more high-achievers and produced more occupational elites (such as top income earners) decades later in the labor market. This gain came at a distributional cost, however. Meritocratic centralization also increased the number of urban-born elites relative to rural-born ones, undermining equal access to higher education and career advancement.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_04429
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Meritocracy and Its Discontents: Long-run Effects of Repeated School Admission Reforms
Moriguchi, Chiaki
Narita, Yusuke
Tanaka, Mari
General Economics
Economics
What happens if selective colleges change their admission policies? We study this question by analyzing the world's first implementation of nationally centralized meritocratic admissions in the early twentieth century. We find a persistent meritocracy-equity tradeoff. Compared to the decentralized system, the centralized system admitted more high-achievers and produced more occupational elites (such as top income earners) decades later in the labor market. This gain came at a distributional cost, however. Meritocratic centralization also increased the number of urban-born elites relative to rural-born ones, undermining equal access to higher education and career advancement.
title Meritocracy and Its Discontents: Long-run Effects of Repeated School Admission Reforms
topic General Economics
Economics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.04429