Health Effects of the Dream Act on Mexican Immigrant Families in the US

Since the early 2000s, 22 states across the United States have passed the Dream Act that makes undocumented college students eligible for tuition subsidy in the form of in-state tuition. Educational benefits of this policy have been well-documented in prior studies, but whether this policy has impacted the health and mental health of the undocumented and their family members, who may be legal US residents, is unknown. We bridge this knowledge gap by exploiting the temporal and geographical variation in the state-Dream Acts to examine effects of the Dream Act on health behaviors, health and mental health outcomes of Mexican noncitizen youth as well as their family members. 

Immigration is a stressful undertaking with negative psychosocial impacts. It is associated with increased stress, fear, and uncertainty. For families with undocumented members, the negative health effects of migration are more intense and complicated. Repeated exposure to prejudice, discrimination, and exploitation, on account of their immigration status, and concerns about disclosure and deportation, of oneself or a family member, are likely to leave a negative impact on the health, physical as well as mental, of the undocumented. Policies that aim to ease immigrant integration and provide hope for a brighter future in the US, such as the Dream Act, are likely to reduce migration related fears and stresses and create an environment for less discrimination and exploitation.

We hypothesize that the state-Dream Acts are likely to improve immigrant health and mental health and infuse healthy behaviors, and we empirically test our hypothesis using National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) data for 1998-2009. We use the restricted use NHIS data to link the state policy variables to the individual-level data. We focus on Mexican immigrants because they have a much greater likelihood of being undocumented. We study three areas of health outcomes: physical health (self-rated physical health and work limiting conditions), mental health (sad, hopelessness, restless, nervous, etc.), and health behaviors (drinking and smoking). We use multivariate models controlling for state and year fixed effects.

Preliminary results show that noncitizen Mexican youths living in states that offer in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants show a statistically significant drop in their levels of nervousness, restlessness, hopelessness and overall mental health after the implementation of the Dream Act.  The effect of in-state tuition on physical health and health behavior are statistically insignificant. Mexican adults with noncitizen family members also show a decrease in their likelihood of experiencing nervousness or being a smoker in response to the Dream Act. This study offers evidence that demonstrates that investments into offering in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants not only have positive educational benefits on affected youths, but also improve the mental health well-being of these Mexican youths and family members.