Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Panel: Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Research on Racial Inequality

(Social Equity)

This panel includes four papers that use experimental and quasi-experimental methods to identify causes of racial inequality in order to develop effective policy interventions. The papers included in this panel cover a wide range of geographic focus as well as life course stage. The first paper beings at the earliest life stage: the impact of in-utero exposure to environmental hazards on racial disparities in educational attainment. The second paper moves along the life course to school age children and examines the effect of implicit bias among school counselors. The panel ends with two papers examining adult events: one examining the impact of a federal policy on racial disparities in arrests and the other examining discrimination in the labor force in a metropolitan area. The papers in this panel cover a range of disciplines, geographic level, and life stage, but all four are tied together by an interest in understanding the causal mechanisms behind racial inequality. Many of these papers also explicitly examine intersectionality by investigating not just race, but also how race interacts with sex, religion, immigration status, and ethnicity. The research included in this panel is central to developing effective policies to reduce racial disparities across the life course.