The Economic, Social and Health Effects of America’s Two-Year Public College

Abstract

This dissertation is comprised of three essays in the fields of labor economics, health economics, and the economics of education. Each essay concerns the estimation of the causal effect of increased access to college on life outcomes, including college attainment, occupation, assortative marriage, and longevity.

In the first essay I examine the effects of the great expansion of the two-year public college in the US between 1920 and 1940. How did the opening of a local two-year public college affect college attainment and life outcomes for local college-age individuals? Linking individuals from the 1920 to the 1940 Census and geocoding childhood towns in the 1920 Census, I find causal evidence that local individuals with access to newly-opened public colleges attained more years of college, had a higher likelihood of completing a four-year college degree, and were more likely to have a professional occupation and to have a college-educated spouse.

In the second essay I build upon the work of the first essay by linking individuals to Social Security enrollment and death records and estimating the effects of the 1920-1940 junior college openings on longevity. In the U.S. population—then and now—college attainment is strongly correlated with having a longer lifespan, but it is far less clear how much this correlation reflects a causal effect. I find causal evidence that the increased access to college arising from the college openings—and the resulting increased college attainment—led to greater longevity. However, the staggered nature of Social Security enrollment in its first decades raises the possibility that these results are in part an artifact of `post-treatment bias.’ This possibility forms part of the motivation for the third essay of this dissertation.

The third essay consists of an analysis of the effects of postwar community college openings on college attainment and longevity. In this postwar context, I show that there is no longer a possibility of post-treatment bias, enabling a greater degree of confidence in the estimated effects. I find causal evidence that the postwar community college openings led to greater college attainment, a higher likelihood of completing a four-year degree, and greater longevity.