State dream acts and education, health and mental health of Mexican young adults in the U.S

Neeraj Kaushal, Julia Shu Huah Wang*, Xiaoning Huang

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

We investigate the education, health and mental health effects of state policies that allowed or explicitly banned tuition subsidy and financial aid to undocumented college students using the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) for 1998–2013. Our analysis suggests that an explicit ban on tuition subsidy or enrollment in public colleges lowered college education of non-citizen Mexican young adults by 5.4–11.6 percentage points. We find some evidence that in-state tuition and access to financial aid improved self-reported health and reduced mental health distress, and ban on in-state-tuition/enrollment increased mental health distress among non-citizen Mexican young adults: estimated effects are generally significant in first-difference models and models that include state-specific cubic trends, and often insignificant in difference-in-difference models.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)138-149
Number of pages12
JournalEconomics and Human Biology
Volume31
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2018

Keywords

  • Dream Act
  • Education
  • Mental health
  • Mexican young adults
  • Self rated health
  • Undocumented immigration

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Economics, Econometrics and Finance (miscellaneous)

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