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Report
State Investment in Higher Education: Effects on Human Capital Formation, Student Debt, and Long-Term Financial Outcomes of Students
Most public colleges and universities rely heavily on state financial support. As state budgets have tightened in recent decades, appropriations for higher education have declined substantially. Despite concerns expressed by policymakers and scholars that the declines in state support have reduced the return to education investment for public sector students, little evidence exists that can identify the causal effect of these funds on long-run outcomes. We present the first such analysis in the literature using new data that leverages the merger of two rich datasets—consumer credit records ...
Working Paper
State Appropriations and Employment at Higher Education Institutions
his paper studies the impacts of state appropriations on staffing and salaries at public higher education institutions in the United States using employment and revenue data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, along with an instrumental variables strategy borrowed from Deming and Walters (2018) and Chakrabarti, Gorton, and Lovenheim (2020). The instrument sidesteps the potential endogeneity of state appropriations for a given institution in a given year by interacting an institution’s historical reliance on state appropriations with total state appropriations for all ...
Working Paper
Does immigration crowd natives into or out of higher education?
Over the past several decades, the United States has experienced some of its largest immigrant inflows since the Great Depression. This higher level of immigration has generated significant debate on the effects of such inflows on receiving markets and natives. Education market studies have found that inflows of immigrant students can displace some natives from enrollment. Meanwhile, labor market studies have primarily examined the impact of immigrant labor inflows on the wages of similarly and dissimilarly skilled natives, with mixed results. The lack of consensus in the wage studies has ...
Working Paper
The Great Migration and Educational Opportunity
This paper studies the impact of the First Great Migration on children. We use the complete count 1940 Census to estimate selection-corrected place effects on education for children of Black migrants. On average, Black children gained 0.8 years of schooling (12 percent) by moving from the South to the North. Many counties that had the strongest positive impacts on children during the 1940s offer relatively poor opportunities for Black youth today. Opportunities for Black children were greater in places with more schooling investment, stronger labor market opportunities for Black adults, more ...
Report
A New Look at Racial Disparities Using a More Comprehensive Wealth Measure
Most research measuring disparities in wealth by race relies on data that exclude resources that are disproportionately important to low-wealth and non-white families, namely defined benefit (DB) pensions and Social Security. This paper finds that once these resources are included, disparities in wealth between white families and Black and Hispanic families are substantially smaller and that they are not rising over time. The powerful equalizing roles of DB pensions and Social Security highlighted here are further motivation for maintaining their fiscal health. This paper also presents ...
Report
How Do Voters Respond to Welfare vis-à-vis Public Good Programs? An Empirical Test for Clientelism
This paper examines allocation of benefits under local government programs in West Bengal, India to isolate patterns consistent with political clientelism. Using household survey data, we find that voters respond positively to private welfare benefits but not to local public good programs, while reporting having benefited from both. Consistent with the voting patterns, shocks to electoral competition induced by exogenous redistricting of villages resulted in upper-tier governments manipulating allocations across local governments only for welfare programs. Through the lens of a hierarchical ...
Report
Clientelistic Politics and Pro-Poor Targeting: Rules versus Discretionary Budgets
Past research has provided evidence of clientelistic politics in delivery of program benefits by local governments (gram panchayats (GPs)), and manipulation of GP program budgets by legislators and elected officials at upper tiers in West Bengal, India. Using household panel survey data spanning 1998-2008, we examine the consequences of clientelism for distributive equity. We find that targeting of anti-poverty programs was progressive both within and across GPs, and is explained by greater 'vote responsiveness' of poor households to receipt of welfare benefits. Across-GP allocations were ...
Discussion Paper
Developing Inclusive Communities: Challenges and Opportunities for Mixed-Income Housing
Over the past decade, housing costs have risen faster than incomes. The need for affordable rental housing has well outpaced the number of available units as well as funding allocations at the federal level. Local regulation and land use policies that increase the cost of subsidized, mixed-income housing construction and preservation have contributed to the affordability problem. {{p}} To meet the affordable housing needs in U.S. communities, innovation, creativity, and "out of the box" thinking may be required, particularly as it relates to reducing the rapidly increasing costs of ...
Working Paper
The Returns to Public Library Investment
Local governments spend over 12 billion dollars annually funding the operation of 17,000 public libraries in the United States, yet we know little about their effects. We use data describing the near-universe of public libraries to show that public library investment increases children’s attendance at library events by 18%, children’s checkouts of items by 21%, and library visits by 21%. Increases in library use translate into improved test scores in nearby school districts: a $1,000 or greater per-student capital investment in local public libraries increases reading test scores by 0.02 ...
Report
The Effect of Constitutional Provisions on Education Policy and Outcomes
Education services in the United States are determined predominantly by non-market institutions, the rules of which are defined by state constitutions. This paper empirically examines the effect of changes in constitutional provisions on education outcomes in the United States. To show causal effects, we exploit discontinuities in the procedure for adopting constitutional amendments to compare outcomes when an amendment passed with those when an amendment failed. Our results show that adoption of an amendment results in higher per-pupil expenditure, higher teacher salaries, smaller class ...