California Center for Population Research

This paper investigates the effect of ‘Communist affirmative action’ on inequality in access to secondary and post-secondary education in five former socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe between 1948 and 1989. I argue that earlier research failed to identify any periods of reduced inequality in former socialist countries because it employed inadequate definition of both dependent and independent variables. After correcting these inaccuracies, I analytically explore data from the Social stratification in Eastern Europe after 1989 data file and am indeed able to document that inequality in access to education indeed declined during periods of most extreme Communism in the early 1950s and, in some countries, also during the early 1970s.