DC Accepted Papers Paper:
The Impact of Refugees on Native Students' Academic Achievement
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
The number of asylum seekers worldwide has reached its highest point in history, motivating heated debate among politicians about the effects of such large migrations on host countries. Over 80,000 refugees entered the U.S. in 2016, including large numbers of children, and there is uncertainty about how this inflow will affect native children’s schooling outcomes. This paper studies how the largest inflow of refugees in U.S. history – the inflow of Indochinese refugees at the end of the Vietnam War – affected native children’s academic achievement and post-secondary education. To identify the causal effect of refugees on native students' academic success, I use novel data from the U.S. National Archives that contain refugees' first county of destination. This was determined by resettlement agencies and, as I will show, was uncorrelated with previous schooling conditions. I find zero or small positive effects from the inflow of Indochinese refugees on native children's academic achievement. These estimates are small and precisely estimated. There is also evidence of an improvement in the quality of native students' post-secondary education as native students were more likely to complete bachelor and graduate degrees if they were living in counties where refugees were a higher share of the population.
