Does Peer Motivation Impact Educational Investments? Evidence From DACA

Briana Ballis

No 2021-027, Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group

Abstract: Despite the significant influence that peer motivation is likely to have on educational investments during high school, it is difficult to test empirically since exogenous changes in peer motivation are rarely observed. In this paper, I focus on the 2012 introduction of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) to study a setting in which peer motivation changed sharply for a subset of high school students. DACA significantly increased the returns to schooling for undocumented youth, while leaving the returns for their peers unchanged. I find that DACA induced undocumented youth to invest more in their education, which also had positive spillover effects on ineligible students (those born in the US) who attended high school with high concentrations of DACA-eligible youth.

Keywords: high school; DACA; Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals; undocumented youth; Spillover effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H52 I26 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-net and nep-ure
Note: MIP
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Ballis ... n-ed-invest-daca.pdf First version, June 1, 2021 (application/pdf)

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