Trade-offs within social equity : the unintended consequences of equity-based policies
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Government policies aimed at promoting social equity often confront complex tradeoffs between competing dimensions of equity, potentially generating new inequities while addressing existing ones. This dissertation examines this phenomenon through three empirical analyses, each demonstrating how equity-focused policies can produce unintended consequences that exacerbate disparities in unexpected ways. The first chapter analyzes how progressive taxation of wealthy nonprofit colleges' endowment returns affects institutional behavior and enrollment opportunity. While designed to reduce resource inequality across higher education institutions, this policy appears to push colleges to shift the tax burden onto students through increased tuition and fees. The analysis reveals that these price increases disproportionately reduce enrollment among historically underserved groups, undermining the policy's equity objectives. The second chapter investigates the distributional effects of property assessment reforms on housing prices. The empirical evidence demonstrates that when governments enhance assessment fairness to ensure property owners pay taxes proportional to their properties' market values, the valuation process itself generates price signals to the market. These signals disproportionately push up property values in wealthy neighborhoods, where assessments historically deviated more significantly from market values. Consequently, while property reassessment reforms aim to improve tax fairness, they would trigger house price appreciation in high-value areas, undermining housing affordability and exacerbating spatial inequality. The third chapter examines the allocation of on-campus resources, particularly student dormitories, and its impact on academic outcomes. The study reveals that allocation policies based solely on geographical proximity may fail to prioritize resources for students who would benefit most from them. Using a boundary discontinuity design, the research demonstrates that on-campus living generates positive effects on student engagement and long-term academic outcomes, with particularly strong benefits for low-income students. However, additional analysis shows that students from wealthy families are more likely to live farther from campus and thus receive priority under distance-based dormitory assignment policies. This pattern illustrates how seemingly fair allocation policies can produce inequitable outcomes in practice. This dissertation contributes to our understanding of the complexities in designing and implementing equity-focused policies. It emphasizes the importance of considering potential unintended consequences and suggests strategies for balancing multiple equity considerations in policy design. By examining these trade-offs, this research aims to inform more effective and holistic approaches to promoting social equity through public policy.
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PhD