The papers in this dissertation reflect my two areas of research interest: immigrant assimilation into the U.S. economy and the effect of school funding mechanisms on resources available to students.
The first chapter uses a case-control methodology to evaluate the impact of school finance centralization on the level and growth of per-pupil instructional expenditures. Washington State centralized its school funding scheme in 1979 in an attempt to ensure adequate education resources and reduce dependence on local property taxes. I find that, while centralization significantly reduced districts' reliance on local revenue sources, it also dampened instructional expenditure growth by about I percent per year for the typical pupil. Resource losses were not evenly distributed across districts, however; students in heterogeneous urban districts suffered disproportionate declines in per-pupil spending as a result of centralization.
The second chapter examines the annual budgetary fiscal impacts of immigrant- and native-headed households on state and local governments. I use census data for New Jersey to determine the extent to which immigrant-native differences in public service use and tax remittances are attributable to nativity status rather than differences in household characteristics. I find that little of the nativity difference in net fiscal impacts is attributable to nativity status per se . However, the relative importance of particular household characteristics in explaining nativity fiscal gaps does vary significantly across immigrant groups.
Finally, the third chapter investigates whether cross-sectional estimates of immigrant earnings growth are biased by "quality" declines across successive immigrant cohorts. I use 1980 and 1990 census data for New Jersey to estimate immigrant and native earnings profiles over the 1980s. I find that immigrants to the state experienced significant real wage growth over the decade. By contrast, there is little evidence to support Borjas' (1995) finding of a secular decline in immigrant cohort quality. These results suggest that state-level studies focusing on immigrant experience in regional labor markets yield more nuanced results than national-level studies.
My Research