Source Themes

Parents' legal status and children's health insurance: Evidence from DACA

Fear of immigration enforcement may deter undocumented parents from enrolling their US citizen children in public health insurance. This paper examines the effect of providing legal status to parents through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals …

Do better journals publish better estimates?

Are estimates typically closer to the true parameter value when those estimates are published in highly-ranked economics journals? Within literatures, we find that the distribution of estimates does not appreciably differ by journal rank. Therefore, …

The effects of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals on labor market outcomes

I study the effects of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) on labor market outcomes among potentially eligible immigrants. DACA allowed undocumented immigrants to participate in the labor market without fear of deportation, which might be expected to increase the probability of working and allowing workers to move to higher-skilled occupations. However, using a regression discontinuity design, I find very little to no effects on the probability of working and the likelihood of working in high-skilled jobs among DACA-eligible immigrants. The confidence intervals permit modest effects on these variables, but rule out large ones. Overall, my results suggest that temporary legal status had limited effects for DACA-eligible immigrants.