Licensed to Drive, but Not to Work: The Labor Market Effects of Driver Licenses for Unauthorized Immigrants

Hans Lueders ()
Additional contact information
Hans Lueders: Stanford University

Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy, 2022, vol. 5, issue 2, No 2, 98-114

Abstract: Abstract Private transportation is often a prerequisite for access to work in the USA. But until recently, driving legally was impossible for the about 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the country. How did unauthorized immigrants’ labor market outcomes change when some states allowed them to get driver licenses? This paper uses American Community Survey microdata from 2010 to 2019 to examine the labor market effects of a recent policy change in California that gave about 2.6 million unauthorized immigrants access to driver licenses. Focusing on unauthorized immigrants of Mexican origin, I find that driver licenses improve this population’s access to private transportation by increasing car ownership rates and the propensity of driving to work. While driver licenses do not improve employment rates among likely unauthorized Mexican immigrants, they raise hours worked and earnings among those who are already employed. The effect on likely unauthorized Mexican immigrants’ employment remains insignificant across genders, age groups, and measures of local labor market accessibility. A power analysis, a placebo test, and several alternative model specifications support the robustness of my results. The paper’s findings suggest that driver licenses have smaller benefits for unauthorized immigrants than for other populations. The lack of employment authorization prevents unauthorized immigrants from enjoying the full benefits of private transportation.

Keywords: Unauthorized immigration; Driver licenses; Private transportation; Employment; Earnings; AB60 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J22 J60 J61 K37 R41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s41996-021-00083-4 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:joerap:v:5:y:2022:i:2:d:10.1007_s41996-021-00083-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer ... policy/journal/41996

DOI: 10.1007/s41996-021-00083-4

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy is currently edited by Gary A. Hoover

More articles in Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().