Content area
Abstract
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.
