Browsing by Author "Juhn, Chinhui"

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    Does Reducing College Costs Improve Educational Outcomes for Undocumented Immigrants?
    (2007) Chin, Aimee; Juhn, Chinhui; James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy
    Ten states, beginning with Texas and California in 2001, have passed laws permitting undocumented students to pay the in-state tuition rate—rather than the more expensive out-of-state tuition rate—at public universities and colleges. We exploit state-time variation in the passage of the laws to evaluate the effects of these laws on the educational outcomes of Hispanic childhood immigrants who are not U.S. citizens. Specifically, we use individual-level data from the 2001-2005 American Community Surveys supplemented by the 2000 U.S. Census, and estimate the effect of the laws on the probability of attending college for 18-24 year olds who have a high school degree and the probability of dropping out of high school for 16-17 year olds. We find some evidence suggestive of a positive effect of the laws on the college attendance of older Mexican men, although in general estimated effects of the laws are not significantly different from zero. We discuss various reasons for the estimated zero effects. Two important considerations are that little time has elapsed since the state laws were passed and that unchanged federal policy on financial aid and legalization for undocumented students may dampen the state laws’ benefits. Thus, the longer-run effects of the laws may well differ from the short-run effects presented in this paper. (JEL I28, J15, J24)
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    Essays on economic adjustments in post-reform Mexico
    (2005) Aguayo-Tellez, Ernesto; Mieszkowski, Peter; Juhn, Chinhui
    This dissertation consists of three empirical essays on the economic adjustments that followed trade liberalization and other market-oriented reforms in Mexico during the 1980s and 1990s. In the first essay, I use micro data from the Mexican Population Census to explain the recent reversal in economic convergence between Mexican states. I decompose the divergence into components due to economy-wide changes in skill prices and components due to state-specific changes in the composition of workers. I find that the rise in the education premium hindered the progress of poor states and raised the variance of average state wages. However, educational attainment mostly compensated for this income widening effect. State-level regressions reveal that initial level of education, size of the agricultural sector, and distance to the U.S. border were important factors while public infrastructure was not. In the second essay, I use Mexican Income-Expenditure Surveys to examine relative wages and employment of women in Mexico during the trade liberalization period. The gender wage gap was relatively stable during 1989--2000 while the relative supply of women increased, suggesting that relative demand for women also increased. I find that industrial change, such as the decline of agriculture and the expansion of services and light manufacturing, moved in favor of women. Using state-level data, I find that the wage bill share of women is negatively related to agricultural employment and positively related to maquiladora employment, a proxy for foreign direct investment. In the third essay, I use micro data from the Mexican Population Census to study the effects of trade liberalization and domestic reforms on rural-urban migration in Mexico. To take better advantages of the new rules of international trade, a new agrarian law gave property rights to communal farmers. At the same time, tariff and quota protection for agriculture as well as price supports, credits and subsidies to this sector were virtually dismantled. I find that in addition to city-village wage differences and after controlling for self-selection, the share of former communal land within a community has an important positive effect on the probability of individual migration.