Endogenous Race in Brazil: Affirmative Action and the Construction of Racial Identity among Young Adults

In this article, we study the construction of racial identity among students at a university that recently adopted racial quotas in admissions. Using data collected by the authors, we find that parents’ race, family socioeconomic status, gender, and racial quotas have a significant effect on self-reported race. The evidence indicates that students in mixed-race families are systematically more likely to identify with their mother’s race than with their father’s. Conditional on skin tone quintile, higher socioeconomic status is associated with lighter racial self-classification, and lower socioeconomic status with darker racial self-classification. Additionally, the results demonstrate that being male is associated with lighter racial self-classification, and being female with darker self-classification. Policy changes may also affect racial identity. After the adoption of racial quotas, students in the darkest two quintiles were less likely to self-identify as branco, those in the fourth quintile were more likely to self-identify as pardo, and those in the darkest quintile were more likely to self-identify as preto.