Migration and Housing Price Effects of Place-Based College Scholarships
Open accessAbstract
Place-based college scholarships, such as the Kalamazoo Promise, provide students who live in a particular place, and/or who attend a particular school district, with generous college scholarships. An important potential benefit from such “Promise programs” is their short-term effects on local economic development. Generous Promise scholarships provide an incentive for families to locate in a particular place, which may change migration patterns, and potentially boost local employment and housing prices. Using data from the American Community Survey, this paper estimates the average effects of eight relatively generous Promise programs on migration rates and housing prices in their local labor market. The paper finds evidence that Promise programs lead to significantly reduced out-migration rates for at least three years after a Promise program is announced. These reductions in out-migration rates are larger for households with children, and are also larger when we focus on smaller areas around the Promise-eligible zone rather than the entire local labor market. These out-migration effects are large, implying that Promise programs lead to a 1.7% increase in overall population of the local labor market.
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Several promise programs have been shown to increase local population, through increased in-migration and reduced out-migration.
“Several promise programs have been shown to increase local population, through increased inmigration and reduced out-migration (LeGower & Walsh, 2017, Bartik & Sotherland, 2015, Sohn, et al., 2017).”
From College Costs, Financial Aid, and Student Decisions (2022) · cites this paper as Bartik & Sotherland, 2015
The Out-migration and Conclusion sections report that Promise programs reduced out-migration and thereby increased local population. But the In-Migration section finds little support for increased in-migration, and the Conclusion says there is no strong evidence for that effect. Thus this source supports only one of the two migration pathways claimed; page numbers were not provided. (LLM, conf=0.91)
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Flagged first, then by citations
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- Authors
- Bartik, T. J., & Sotherland, N.
- Affiliations
- Institut für Arbeitsmarkt und Berufsforschung (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Bartik, Timothy J.
- ORCID
- Bartik, Timothy J.
- Publisher
- W.E. Upjohn Institute
- Published
- 2015
- OpenAlex
- W2191445264
- Cited by
- 21
- References
- 25
- Citations by year
- 2025: 2 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 4
- Type
- report
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- SSRN Electronic Journal (publishedVersion)
- Econstor (Econstor) (submittedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Upjohn Research (W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Lumina Foundation
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies
- Social Sciences › Education › Higher Education Research Studies
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Housing Market and Economics
- Keywords
- promise programs, Kalamazoo Promise, emigration, housing prices, local economic development, local labor markets, household location choice, demographic change, local employment
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