Intended and Unintended Effects of State Tuition Benefits to Undocumented Students : Institution and Individual-Level Evidence

I investigate how allowing lower tuition for undocumented students at public colleges improves education outcomes, changes institutional pricing patterns, and lowers long-run fertility rates. I use administrative data and a residual method to quantify the actual number of undocumented students at school level in the pre-reform period. Exploiting the reform's staggered adoption across states and time, as well as variation in the intensity of exposure to the reform across institutions -- I find a higher enrollment of undocumented students at the treated states' `more exposed' community colleges. Transfer, technical and vocational colleges drive the enrollment outcomes. In contrast to enrollment, there is strong evidence of higher graduation of undocumented students at both 2-year and 4-year colleges in the treated states. I also observe that students at these `more exposed' institutions experience modest tuition reductions. There is negligible displacement of Americans in treated public colleges. Undocumented females reduce their fertility in response to higher educational attainment -- driven by delayed marriage and household formation decisions. My findings indicate that the education and fertility benefits to undocumented students come with no significant unintended costs to other students. I estimate that the reform costs around $16.4 million per year on average