Poster #58 - Immigration Policies and Human Capital: The Impact on Undocumented College Attendance

• In Event: Friday Poster Reception

Abstract

I design a series of event studies to estimate the impact of various state policies on the college attendance of undocumented, non-citizen, and citizen Hispanics in the United States. I implement a random forest algorithm as my primary approach for imputing undocumented status, but I also use both logit and logical imputation as robustness checks. My results indicate that Universal E-Verify laws lower the college attendance of undocumented immigrants ages 18-25 by 2 percentage points. This is a large effect, given that only 20.7 percent of undocumented immigrants ages 18-25 either were attending or completed college. This result is robust to all of my specifications. Conversely, I do not find that more lenient in-state tuition and financial aid policies lead to higher undocumented education. I also do not find any evidence that my results are biased by selective migration. These results suggest that greater employment restrictions on undocumented immigrants produce detrimental effects on human capital accumulation. More lenient education policies, as currently structured, may not ameliorate the negative effect.

Author

• David Titus, Cornell University
  Presenting Author