Amidst rising and increasingly unaffordable rents, 7.6 million people are threatened with eviction each year across the United States'and eviction rates are twice as high for renters with children. One important and neglected population who may experience unique levels of housing insecurity is college students, especially given that one in five college students are parents. In this study, we link 11.9 million student records to eviction filings from housing courts, demographic characteristics reported in decennial census and survey data, incomes reported on tax returns by students and their parents, and dates of birth and death from the Social Security Administration. Parenting students are more likely than non-parenting students to identify as female (62.81% vs. 55.94%) and Black (19.66% vs. 14.30%), be over 30 years old (42.73% vs. 20.25%), and have parents with lower household incomes ($100,000 vs. $140,000). Parenting students threatened with eviction (i.e., had an eviction filed against them) are much more likely than non-threatened parenting students to identify as female (81.18% vs. 62.81%) and Black (56.84% vs. 19.66%). In models adjusted for individual and institutional characteristics, we find that being threatened with an eviction was significantly associated with reduced likelihood of degree completion, reduced post-enrollment income, reduced likelihood of being married post-enrollment, and increased post-enrollment mortality. Among parenting students, 38.38% (95% confidence interval (CI): 32.50-44.26%) of non-threatened students completed a bachelor's degree compared to just 15.36% (CI: 11.61-19.11%) of students threatened with eviction. Our findings highlight the long-term economic and health impacts of housing insecurity during college, especially for parenting students. Housing stability for parenting students may have substantial multigenerational benefits for economic mobility and population health.
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School Discipline and Racial Disparities in Early Adulthood
June 2021
Working Paper Number:
CES-21-14
Despite interest in the role of school discipline in the creation of racial inequality, previous research has been unable to identify how students who receive suspensions in school differ from unsuspended classmates on key young adult outcomes. We utilize novel data to document the links between high school discipline and important young adult outcomes related to criminal justice contact, social safety net program participation, post-secondary education, and the labor market. We show that the link between school discipline and young adult outcomes tends to be stronger for Black students than for White students, and that inequality in exposure to school discipline accounts for approximately 30 percent of the Black-White disparities in young adult criminal justice outcomes and SNAP receipt.
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Childhood Housing and Adult Earnings: A Between-Siblings Analysis of Housing Vouchers and Public Housing
January 2013
Working Paper Number:
CES-13-48RR
To date, research on the long-term effects of childhood participation in voucher-assisted and public housing has been limited by the lack of data and suitable identification strategies. We create a national level longitudinal data set that enables us to analyze how children's housing experiences affect adult earnings and incarceration rates. While naive estimates suggest there are substantial negative consequences to childhood participation in voucher assisted and public housing, this result appears to be driven largely by selection of households into housing assistance programs. To mitigate this source of bias, we employ household fixed-effects specifications that use only within-household (across-sibling) variation for identification. Compared to naive specifications, household fixed-effects estimates for earnings are universally more positive, and they suggest that there are positive and statistically significant benefits from childhood residence in assisted housing on young adult earnings for nearly all demographic groups. Childhood participation in assisted housing also reduces the likelihood of incarceration across all household race/ethnicity groups. Time spent in voucher-assisted or public housing is especially beneficial for females from non-Hispanic Black households, who experience substantial increases in expected earnings and lower incarceration rates.
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Gifted Identification Across the Distribution of Family Income
December 2025
Authors:
Quentin Brummet,
Andrew Penner,
Emily Penner,
Leah R. Clark,
Michelle Spiegel,
Paul Hanselman,
Nicholas J. Ainsworth,
Aaron J. Ainsworth,
Christopher Cleveland,
Jacob Hibel,
Andrew Saultz
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-73
Currently, 6.1 percent of K-12 students in the United States receive gifted education. Using education and IRS data that provide information on students and their family income, we show pronounced differences in who schools identify as gifted across the distribution of family income. Under 4 percent of students in the lowest income percentile are identified as gifted, compared with 20 percent of those in the top income percentile. Income-based differences persist after accounting for student test scores and exist across students of different sexes and racial/ethnic groups, underscoring the importance of family resources for gifted identification in schools.
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Immigrant Status, Race, and Institutional Choice in Higher Education
March 1998
Working Paper Number:
CES-98-04
This paper examines the postsecondary enrollment decisions of immigrant students, expanding on previous work by explicitly considering their choices among institution types and by examining differences across generations and racial/ethnic categories. Using data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS:88), we hypothesize that community colleges may play a more significant role in providing access to higher education for immigrants than for the native-born population. Our results support our hypothesis only among Asian immigrants. First-generation black immigrants have a higher probability of enrolling in private vocational schools, while second-generation Hispanics (and native blacks) have a higher probability of enrolling in both public and private four-year colleges and universities. Survey (1988)
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Capturing More Than Poverty: School Free and Reduced-Price Lunch Data and Household Income
December 2017
Working Paper Number:
carra-2017-09
Educational researchers often use National School Lunch Program (NSLP) data as a proxy for student poverty. Under NSLP policy, students whose household income is less than 130 percent of the poverty line qualify for free lunch and students whose household income is between 130 percent and 185 percent of the poverty line qualify for reduced-price lunch. Linking school administrative records for all 8th graders in a California public school district to household-level IRS income tax data, we examine how well NSLP data capture student disadvantage. We find both that there is substantial disadvantage in household income not captured by NSLP category data, and that NSLP categories capture disadvantage on test scores above and beyond household income.
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School-Based Disability Identification Varies by Student Family Income
December 2025
Authors:
Quentin Brummet,
Andrew Penner,
Emily Penner,
Leah R. Clark,
Michelle Spiegel,
Paul Y. Yoo,
Paul Hanselman,
Nicholas J. Ainsworth,
Christopher Cleveland,
Jacob Hibel,
Andrew Saultz,
Juan Camilo Cristancho
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-74
Currently, 18 percent of K-12 students in the United States receive additional supports through the identification of a disability. Socioeconomic status is viewed as central to understanding who gets identified as having a disability, yet limited large-scale evidence examines how disability identification varies for students from different income backgrounds. Using unique data linking information on Oregon students and their family income, we document pronounced income-based differences in how students are categorized for two school-based disability supports: special education services and Section 504 plans. We find that a quarter of students in the lowest income percentile receive supports through special education, compared with less than seven percent of students in the top income percentile. This pattern may partially reflect differences in underlying disability-related needs caused by poverty. However, we find the opposite pattern for 504 plans, where students in the top income percentiles are two times more likely to receive 504 plan supports. We further document substantial variation in these income-based differences by disability category, by race/ethnicity, and by grade level. Together, these patterns suggest that disability-related needs alone cannot account for the income-based differences that we observe and highlight the complex ways that income shapes the school and family processes that lead to variability in disability classification and services.
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Universal Preschool Lottery Admissions and Its Effects on Long-Run Earnings and Outcomes
March 2023
Working Paper Number:
CES-23-09
We use an admissions lottery to estimate the effect of a universal (non-means tested) preschool program on students' long-run earnings, income, marital status, fertility and geographic mobility. We observe long-run outcomes by linking both admitted and non-admitted individuals to confidential administrative data including tax records. Funding for this preschool program comes from an Indigenous organization, which grants Indigenous students admissions preference and free tuition. We find treated children have between 5 to 6 percent higher earnings as young adults. The results are strongest for individuals from the lower half of the household income distribution in childhood. Likely mechanisms include high-quality teachers and curriculum.
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Estimating the Impact of the Age of Criminal Majority: Decomposing Multiple Treatments in a Regression Discontinuity Framework
January 2023
Working Paper Number:
CES-23-01
This paper studies the impact of adult prosecution on recidivism and employment trajectories for adolescent, first-time felony defendants. We use extensive linked Criminal Justice Administrative Record System and socio-economic data from Wayne County, Michigan (Detroit). Using the discrete age of majority rule and a regression discontinuity design, we find that adult prosecution reduces future criminal charges over 5 years by 0.48 felony cases (? 20%) while also worsening labor market outcomes: 0.76 fewer employers (? 19%) and $674 fewer earnings (? 21%) per year. We develop a novel econometric framework that combines standard regression discontinuity methods with predictive machine learning models to identify mechanism-specific treatment effects that underpin the overall impact of adult prosecution. We leverage these estimates to consider four policy counterfactuals: (1) raising the age of majority, (2) increasing adult dismissals to match the juvenile disposition rates, (3) eliminating adult incarceration, and (4) expanding juvenile record sealing opportunities to teenage adult defendants. All four scenarios generate positive returns for government budgets. When accounting for impacts to defendants as well as victim costs borne by society stemming from increases in recidivism, we find positive social returns for juvenile record sealing expansions and dismissing marginal adult charges; raising the age of majority breaks even. Eliminating prison for first-time adult felony defendants, however, increases net social costs. Policymakers may still find this attractive if they are willing to value beneficiaries (taxpayers and defendants) slightly higher (124%) than potential victims.
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Parental Earnings and Children's Well-Being and Future Success: An Analysis of the SIPP Matched to SSA Earnings Data
April 2011
Working Paper Number:
CES-11-12
We estimate the association between parental earnings and a wide variety of indicators of child well-being using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) matched to administrative earnings records from the Social Security Administration. We find that the use of longer time averages of parent earnings leads to substantially higher estimated effects compared to using only a single year of parent earnings. This suggests that previous studies may have understated the potential efficacy of income support programs to improve child well-being. Further, policy makers should take into account the attenuation bias when comparing studies that use different time spans to measure parental income. Using 7 year time averages of parent earnings, we show for example, that a doubling of parent earnings reduces the probability of a teenager reporting being in poor health by close to 50 percent and a child having insufficient food by 75 percent.
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Education and Mortality: Evidence for the Silent Generation from Linked Census and Administrative Data
August 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-56
We quantify the effect of education on mortality using a linkage of the full count 1940, 2000, and 2010 US census files and the Numident death records file. Our sample is composed of children aged 0-18 in 1940, observed living with at least one parent, for whom we can construct a rich set of parental and neighborhood characteristics. We estimate effects of educational attainment in 1940 on survival to 2000, as well as the effects of completed education, observed in 2000, on 10-year survival to 2010. The educational gradients in longevity that we estimate are robust to the inclusion of detailed individual, parental, household, neighborhood and county covariates. Given our full population census sample, we also explore rich patterns of heterogeneity and examine the effect of mediators of the education-mortality relationship. The mediators we consider in this study explain more than half of the relationship between education and mortality. We further show that the mechanisms underlying the education-mortality gradient might be different at different margins of educational attainment.
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