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Title: ssays in Applied Microeconomics: Immigration and Education.

Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis

Publication Year: 2023

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Abstract: This dissertation consists of three essays regarding topics of immigration and education. The first essay is a case study of California’s DREAM Act, a state provision that began awarding qualified undocumented Californians access to state-funded financial aid in 2013. I explore effects of the program on various educational outcomes, using a synthetic control framework to accommodate the single-treatment scenario. Regression estimates are obtained by using foreign-born non-citizen Mexicans + Central Americans (FBNCMCA) as proxies for undocumented status. Results show a modest 4% effect on college enrollment of FBNCMCA Californians relative to that of Synthetic California. The increase is partly attributable to higher enrollment and graduation rates at the high school level, as evidenced by Post/Pre-RMSPE rankings and graphical comparisons between California and Synthetic California. Other educational outcomes (e.g., college graduation) show economically meaningful synthetic control graphs (i.e., good fit in the pre-period), but are prone to lack of power and precision which may be brought on by the synthetic control framework and narrow sample of interest. The second essay continues this line of inquiry by exploring adoption of in-state tuition (ISRT) and state-funded financial aid (FA) provisions across the United States. To exploit variation from staggered adoption of these policies, I employ a two-way fixed effects (TWFE) difference-in-differences (DiD) strategy. Furthermore, in light of the continued development of the generalized DiD framework, I use several alternative identification strategies, as a means to alleviate any concerns regarding known-heterogeneity issues (over time and across sections). Results show a clear, positive impact on college-going rates (9.6% and 15.6% for ISRT and FA provisions relative to the mean) with p = 0.04 but fail to show a significant effect for college completion or high school rates. This suggests that many undocumented individuals were already attending and finishing high school prior to the introduction of these provisions and that such policies may have pushed marginal students to enroll. Results also fail to show these students finishing their college education, which dampens the average graduation rate. Evidence of U.S. citizens being negatively impacted through lower college enrollment rates were present. Specifically, fewer Black Americans enrolled in postsecondary education following such provisions, leading to a smaller cohort group. Among these students, a larger proportion went onto graduate since individuals may have been positively selected. Finally, robustness checks showed that certain estimates under the TWFE strategy may be capturing a weighted average rather than the actual treatment effect. Use of never-adopting controls and only-adopting treatments were able to shed light on the complex relationship between ISRT and FA provisions and their impacts on educational outcomes. The third essay investigates labor market outcomes of Hispanic immigrants in the United States following the 2016 election cycle. Using the sharp change in immigration policy from the Obama to Trump administration, I model an individual’s labor market choice through a nested logit framework. Within the multi-level strategy, the first choice deals with one’s decision to participate in the labor force, which is followed by a degenerate branch if individuals choose not to participate. Conditional on being in the labor force, individuals can be employed, unemployed, or self-employed (exclusive). This strategy relaxes the independence of irrelevant alternatives assumption across my two nests: in the labor force and not in the labor force. Regression results show a statistically significant decrease of ≈29% (relative to the mean) in the number of unemployed and an increase in self-employed individuals (≈9%). Descriptively, some of the previously unemployed undocumented individuals may be giving up in the labor market, while others are transitioning to self-employment.

Url: https://repository.lib.ncsu.edu/bitstream/handle/1840.20/41407/etd.pdf?sequence=1

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Authors: Choi, Kyung Wan.

Institution: North Carolina State University

Department: Economics

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Pages: 1-231

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Education, Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Migration and Immigration

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