Michigan State University Extension
Diversity and Pluralism - 02080140
12/95/
ERIC TITLE NUMBER: ED147385 AUTHOR: Johnson, George E.; Welch, Finis
TITLE: The Labor Market Implications of an Economy-Wide
Affirmative Action Program.
YEAR PUBLISHED: 1976
NOTE: 34 p.
ABSTRACT: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the
potential impact, on the distribution of labor income, of
a policy that requires that in each firm minority workers:
(1) receive the same wages as majority workers given the
same job classifications and, (2) are employed in the same
proportion as majority workers in all job classifications.
This analysis is directed to the question of the maximum
potential of affirmative action policies. Given that
Affirmative Action Policies (AAP) have two principle
provisions (equal pay for equal work, and mandatory hiring
in each firm of minority workers to fill at least a
specified fraction of skilled positions), the effects of
the policy will depend on the size of the quota relative to
the number of skilled minority workers in the economy, the
degree to which the minority groups suffer labor market
discrimination, and the nature of the way firms react to
the new environment. Three different situations are
explained: what happens when the quotas are set just equal
to the supply of skilled workers, when quotas are set at
less than the supply of skilled workers. In the remainder
of the paper the implications of AAP for a number of
special cases are investigated. For each case, a numerical
model of income differences between the races is used. In
the last section a model of heterogeneous labor is employed
to investigate the potential impact of AAP on the
incentives for minority and majority labor to acquire
skills. (Author/AM)
KEY DESCRIPTORS: Economic-Factors;
Equal-Opportunities-Jobs; Minority-Groups;
Policy-Formation; Quotas-
KEY DESCRIPTORS: *Affirmative-Action; *Conceptual-Schemes;
*Data-Analysis; *Income-; *Labor-Economics; *Labor-Market
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