The Local Economic Impact of International Students
Open Access
- Author:
- Zhu, Qiong
- Graduate Program:
- Higher Education
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- September 11, 2019
- Committee Members:
- John Jesse Cheslock, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
John Jesse Cheslock, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Leticia Oseguera, Committee Member
Kevin Kinser, Committee Member
Guangqing Chi, Outside Member
Liang Zhang, Special Member
Leticia Oseguera, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- Economic Impact
International Student
Spatial Econometrics - Abstract:
- While college students are increasingly mobile across countries, there is limited evidence of these mobile students’ impact on local communities in host countries. The purpose of this study is to fill this gap by investigating the impact of international students on local economies in the United States. I examined two overarching research questions in particular: (1) How does the international enrollment affect the housing and labor markets of areas adjacent to college campuses? and (2) How does the production of international college graduates in a state affect the stock of international college-educated workers in that state? For the first research question, I used county-level data from the American Community Survey (ACS) and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) between 2010 and 2017 to test the impact of international enrollment on three local economic outcomes: median rents, median house values, and employment. A shift-share instrumental variable that exploits the historical share of international student enrollment in each county was constructed to address the endogeneity of international enrollment. Findings from spatial panel models with two-way fixed effects show that an increase of 1,000 international students increased the median rents in an average county by 0.6–0.8%, the median house values by 0.6–1.2%, and employment by 0.1–0.2%. This study also contributed to the field of higher education by applying spatial panel models to estimate the spillover effect of international enrollment. In other words, international students studying in a particular county significantly contributed to the economies of neighboring counties as well. Moreover, this study found that international undergraduate students had a larger impact than international graduate students on local economies while enrolled at higher education institutions. When the analysis was disaggregated by geographic regions, international students had the greatest impact on rents and house values in the South and the least in the Midwest. The analysis of the second research question used state-level data from ACS and IPEDS between 2006 and 2016 to estimate the relationship between the production and the stock of international graduates. While the production was measured as the number of college degrees (i.e., bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees) conferred on international students in a given state, the stock was measured as the number of foreign workers who had earned a college degree. Using spatial panel models with two-way fixed effects, this study found a modest production-stock elasticity for international graduates. A 1% increase in the production of international graduates with bachelor’s degrees was associated with a 0.2% increase in the stock of college-educated international workers. The production-stock elasticity for international graduates with advanced degrees was not statistically significant. This suggests that international graduates are overall very mobile. The location of a higher education institution may have a larger impact on bachelor’s-degree recipients than those with advanced degrees.