| Jason Dunick
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Do 4-year colleges produce better citizens? Measuring the civic returns to different types of post-secondary education
In the debate about the government's responsibility to subsidize higher education, the focus on individual wage returns often overshadows the other positive social effects of post-secondary education. Increased tax revenues, lower crime rates, lower healthcare costs, wage spillovers, and increased civic participation have been correlated with higher rates of post-secondary education, but only in the last few years have researchers begun to measure the precise effect if higher education on these social benefits. This project seeks to add to this burgeoning field of study by using the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88) to uncover the nature of the causal link between post-secondary education and civic behavior. By better understanding how different types of post-secondary education specifically affect the civic participation of individuals, this project will provide important information to policy-makers in the debate about the role of government in funding post-secondary education.
Since it is not feasible to randomly distribute post-secondary opportunities, this research will employ a propensity score matching technique to create and appropriate control group to examine the treatment effect of various types of post-secondary education on civic behaviors such as voting and volunteering. To address the potential endogenous nature of post-secondary school choice, this research will take advantage of the variable rich nature of the NELS:88 dataset and use a wide variety of control variables at the individual, family, and school level.
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