The increase in immigrant students in the U.S. has generated debate on the effects of immigration on education and on the perceived costs that immigrants may impose on schools, local government, and educational outcomes of U.S.-born students. Yet there is limited research on the effects of immigrant students on the educational outcomes of native peers. Economist Paola Sapienza and colleagues will examine educational outcomes when native students are exposed to immigrant peers.

Economist Nathan Nunn and colleagues will examine the role of upward mobility among immigrants in the past as a predictor of contemporary perceptions of mobility and redistributive preferences. They will assess the extent to which preferences for redistribution in a county today are related to the average immigrant population in that county during the 1850-1920 “Age of Mass Migration.” The PIs will conduct a new, nationally-representative survey measuring individual perceptions of mobility, preferences for redistribution policy, and ancestry.

In 2016, only 13 states allowed pregnant women to access prenatal care regardless of their immigration status through either a state-funded program or the Children’s Health Insurance Program. As a result, many immigrant women do not have access to preconception care, prenatal care, or both. Perinatal epidemiologist Teresa Janevic and colleagues will estimate the effect of exclusion from preconception and prenatal Medicaid coverage on immigrant women’s access to prenatal care and adverse pregnancy events.

Under current law, the U.S. requires businesses and organizations to turn over unclaimed property to the relevant state government, which is responsible for locating the owners (or their heirs) and returning the property to the rightful individuals. This often requires a nominal fee when filing a claim and providing verification of owner identity. In fiscal year 2015, the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators reports that state governments received $7.763 billion in unclaimed property, of which only $3.235 billion was returned to the rightful owners.

Carruthers and Wanamaker seek to better understand changes in the black-white wage gap, hypothesizing that the period between 1940 and 1980 is especially important because these were the years in which first, school desegregation led to a reduction in the quality gap between black and white schools, and second, the labor market moved from one without explicit protections for racial minorities to one with codified protections in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.