Meritocracy in the face of group inequality

Abstract

Meritocratic systems are commonly understood as those that assign tasks to individuals who can best perform them. But future performance is not known prior to assignment, and must be inferred from other traits. We consider a model in which performance depends on two attributes—ability and training—where ability is endowed and unobserved, and training is acquired and observed. The potential to acquire training depends on ability and resource access, so ability affects performance through two channels: indirectly through training, and directly through the performance function. The population consists of two groups, each with the same ability distribution, but with differential access to resources. We show that performance‐maximizing allocations are not necessarily group‐blind or monotonic in training, and can involve greater representation of groups with lower resource access than would arise if the only criteria for selection were past performance. If policies are constrained to be monotonic due to the possibility of strategic applicant behaviour, then these representation effects can be mitigated or amplified, depending on the fraction of the population that is selected.