abstract:

We investigate how college participation may differentially influence civic behaviors among individuals who were between 18 and 20 years old in 2012. Using data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009, we consider two direct measures of civic behavior, voter registration and volunteerism. We generate our estimates with propensity forests, a machine learning algorithm that can mitigate bias when using observational data and supports investigation of heterogeneous treatment effects. Overall, we find that college-goers are more likely to register to vote and volunteer, though, conditional on volunteering at all, likely to volunteer fewer hours. We find limited evidence of heterogeneous returns across various groups, suggesting that civic returns to higher education are broadly shared by those who attend.

摘要：

我们调查了大学参与如何对 2012 年 18 至 20 岁个人的公民行为产生不同的影响。使用 2009 年高中纵向研究的数据，我们考虑了公民行为的两个直接衡量标准，选民登记和志愿服务。我们使用倾向森林生成我们的估计，这是一种机器学习算法，可以在使用观察数据时减轻偏差并支持对异质治疗效果的调查。总体而言，我们发现大学生更有可能注册投票和志愿服务，但条件是完全志愿服务，可能志愿服务的时间更少。我们发现不同群体之间回报异质性的证据有限，这表明高等教育的公民回报被那些参加者广泛分享。