Education and Self-reported Health: A Legal Status Perspective

Yiwan Ye
Roy Taggueg, University of California, Davis

The implementation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in 2012 opened the doors for many undocumented migrant youths to pursue higher education. However, for those with non-US Citizen legal status, the benefits provided by additional years of education remain unclear as few researchers have examined how the effects of educational attainment vary across legal status categories. In this study, we seek to test the assumption that there exists a positive linear relationship between educational attainment and self-reported health across different legal status categories. We hypothesize that some groups, such as Visa Holders and Legal Permanent Residents, receive a higher benefit across the outcome variables from additional years of schooling in comparison to undocumented migrants and refugees. To test this hypothesis, we analyze data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). We utilize Combined-Survey Multiple Imputation (CSMI) to estimate the number of undocumented migrants within the sample.

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 Presented in Session 7. Migration & Urbanization