Current Research
My research interests -- the economic
assimilation of immigrants into the United States and education finance -- lie
at the intersection of public economics, labor
economics, and demography. My current research projects examine the
family, school and individual determinants of educational attainment of immigrant
and
native
children and
the
impact
of
school
finance
schemes on resource distribution across pupils.
PRESENTATIONS OF INTEREST
The Educational Progress of California's Immigrant Children Presentation
at the Ninth Annual Meetings of the Society of Labor Economists,
San Antonio, TX,
April 30 - May 1, 2004 (PowerPoint file)
What Determines Immigrants' Educational Progress? Family, School
or Nativity Status? Presentation to the Urban Education Forum, Santa Clara University,
December 2002 (PowerPoint file)
RECENT PUBLISHED and WORKING PAPERS
(PDF
format)
Persistence
in School among California’s Immigrant Youth: The Impact of Generation Status,
working paper, December 2005
Abstract:
This paper uses 2000 Integrated Public Use Microdata Sample data for California
and an augmented child-parent linking algorithm to determine generation status
and measure household characteristics for children ages 16 to 18. Logistic regression
quantifies the role of immigrant generation -- first (further distinguished by
age at arrival), second, and higher order generations -- on the inverse status
dropout rate, i.e., the probability of being enrolled in school OR having received
a regular high school diploma or General Educational Development (GED) credential,
while controlling for other individual, family and neighborhood determinants of
participation. I exploit the large sample sizes in the census to examine how the
impact of generation status differs by national origin, and whether school participation
among at-risk immigrant groups “catches up” with natives across generations.
Finally, I assess to what extent observable characteristics explain differential
school participation behavior. While first-generation Hispanic youth (particularly
Mexicans who arrived after age 6) and indeterminate-generation natives are least
likely to be enrolled in U.S. schools, preliminary results suggest that much of
the observed differential is due to differences in family structure.
The Educational Progress of Immigrant Children: California in Perspective,
Annales du Monde anglophone, 2004
Abstract:
Twenty percent of children under age 18 in the United States had at least
one immigrant parent in 2000. In California, by contrast, the share was more than
double at nearly 50 percent. Since immigrant youth will soon comprise the majority
of California’s workforce, understanding the determinants of immigrants’
educational attainment is imperative. This article focuses on secondary school
achievement as a critical transition point into postsecondary education and the
labor market. I use the 1990 and 2000 censuses and the National Education Longitudinal
Study to examine the relationship between generation status and several indicators
of educational achievement: enrollment, participation in a college-preparatory
high school program, and secondary school completion status. The impact of generation
status on the scholastic achievement of California’s children is compared
to that of the United States overall.
Enrollment, Achievement, and Motivational Profiles of Immigrant and Native Adolescents
(with T. Urdan), in Adolescence and Education Vol 4: Contemporary Practices
and Challenges in the Education of Adolescents, Tim Urdan and Frank Pajares,
editors. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing, 2004
Does State Financing of Public Schools Reduce Expenditure
Inequality across School Districts?, working paper, August 2004.
Abstract: Proponents of centralization (increased state funding of public
elementary and secondary schools) argue that state financing reduces inter-district
disparities in education spending by raising spending in low-spending districts,
not by penalizing high-spending districts. This paper uses a well-established
centralization scheme—that of Washington State in 1979—to assess centralization's
impact on within-state instructional expenditure inequality. Washington was the
first state to centralize school funding in response to concerns about funding
adequacy. Oregon serves as a comparison state. A unique eight-year panel data
set of school-district level fiscal, socioeconomic and census data was constructed
to analyze this question.
Does School Finance Centralization Reduce the Growth of Instructional Spending?
The Case of Reform in Washington, under review
Abstract: Since 1989 more than a dozen states have centralized their
school finance schemes in order to ensure resource adequacy or reduce the expenditure
inequality that characterizes local education finance.
I assess the likely impact of the current wave of centralization on the
level and growth of expenditures by evaluating the effects of a similar reform
enacted in Washington state in 1979. Centralization
significantly reduces school districts’ reliance on local revenue sources to fund
education spending, but at a price. Centralization also reduces instructional
expenditure growth by over 3 percent per year for the typical public school pupil.
Resource losses are not evenly distributed across school districts.
Centralization shifts spending away from pupils in ethnically heterogeneous
urban school districts and toward students in predominantly white, suburban and
rural school districts.
Are Immigrants a Drain on the Public Fisc? State and Local Impacts in New
Jersey (with T. J. Espenshade and J. M. Scully), April 2001. Contains
full regression results for the abbreviated version published in Social Science
Quarterly 83(2): 537-553, June 2002Abstract: This paper uses
1990 census data for New Jersey to examine the extent to which immigrant-native
differences in observed average fiscal impacts is due to something inherent to
nativity status, and how much is due to other ways in which immigrant and native
households differ. We find that differences in households' socioeconomic characteristics
account for most of the differential impact of immigrant households on state and
local government balance sheets. Nativity status per se has little
to do with immigrants' higher fiscal burdens.
The Fiscal Impacts of Immigrant and Native Households: Does Nativity Really Matter?
(with T. J. Espenshade and J. M. Scully), Princeton University Center
for Migration and Development Working Paper #00-05, April 2000 Abstract:
Accumulating research suggests that state-level expenditures on immigrant households
modestly exceed revenues returned to state governments, while immigrants pose
significant net fiscal burdens on local governments. This paper uses 1990
census data for New Jersey to examine the extent to which immigrant-native differences
in household public service use and tax remittances are attributable to nativity
status per se rather than to observable socioeconomic and demographic characteristics.
We also examine the relative importance of particular household characteristics
for explaining observed immigrant-native fiscal gaps across immigrant groups.