NICEP Seminar: Juliana Londono-Velez (UCLA)

Title: The impact of diversity on distributive perceptions and preferences for redistribution

Abstract: Does socioeconomic diversity affect people's perceptions of income distribution and redistributive preferences? I leverage a financial aid reform that drastically boosted the share of low-income students at selective universities in Colombia. Unlike affirmative action, the admissions process remained unaffected, which enables identifying the causal effect of diversity. I combine original survey data with administrative microdata to examine high-income students' outcomes as a function of exposure to low-income peers, leveraging treatment variation across cohorts and majors using difference-in-differences. Diversity caused high-income students to have more accurate perceptions of poverty, raised their concerns about fairness, and boosted their support for progressive redistribution.