UC Irvine

I analyze the relationship between immigrant status and an array of economic outcomes with a special focus on undocumented status and housing. I evaluate the role public policy has played in influencing the observed relationships. In the first chapter, I provide evidence that fear of deportation results in search frictions among undocumented immigrants in the rental housing market, leading undocumented immigrants to pay a rent premium and devote a greater share of their income to housing. Making use of a triple differences empirical strategy, I show that sanctuary city policies work to reduce or even eliminate this premium.

In the second chapter, using both difference-in-differences and synthetic control methods, I show that undocumented status is a barrier to homeownership. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy (DACA) reduced the existing homeownership gap between undocumented and legal resident immigrants. Additionally, I find that a clarification made by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2003 that expanded the availability of certain financial services to undocumented immigrants led to an increase in the relative number of Hispanic home loan applications in counties with the highest concentrations of Hispanic undocumented immigrants, providing evidence that limitations on access to credit have been at least one factor responsible for the homeownership gap.

In the final chapter, I make use of a fuzzy differences-in-discontinuities empirical strategy to evaluate the consequences of providing Medicaid to low-income immigrants. I find evidence that provision of public health insurance reduces the uninsured rate among low-income immigrants but also crowds out spending on private insurance. Importantly, the reduction in private insurance is driven by immigrants substituting away from purchased (non-group) insurance. I do not find evidence of a similar reduction in employer-sponsored health insurance. Consistent with this finding, I also do not detect reductions in labor supply in response to Medicaid.