NYU Furman Center Spring Speaker Series: Michael Cassidy

Please join the NYU Furman Center for a lunchtime presentation:

A Closer Look: School Proximity Boosts Homeless Student Performance in New York City

with

Dr. Michael Cassidy, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Center of Health and Wellbeing at Princeton University

Monday, March 7th from 12:00 - 1:00 p.m. ET

Please register using this link.

1.5 million public school students in the United States experience homelessness each year. Their outcomes are typically abysmal. In New York City, which is home to a twelfth of the nation's homeless students, sheltered K-8 graders miss 26 days of school per year on average. Just one in twenty is proficient. Yet there is little research evaluating policies to improve their situations. This paper uses novel administrative data from NYC to assess the educational effects of locating families in shelters near their children’s schools. It finds that homeless primary (high) schoolers who are placed in shelters in the same boroughs as their schools are 31 (29) percent less likely to change schools during the year of shelter entry. They have 8 (5) percent better attendance, are 16 (8) percent more likely to remain in the public school system, and are 13 percent more likely to be proficient during grades 3-8. Read the full paper here.

About the Presenter: Mike Cassidy is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Center for Health and Wellbeing at Princeton University. He is an applied microeconomist whose research spans labor, public, and urban economics, with particular emphases on welfare, education, and health. His current work focuses on homeless families, while his overall research agenda endeavors to understand how people make decisions and how social policy, broadly construed, can help them make better ones. Mike holds a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.P.A. from Princeton University, and completed his Ph.D. in Economics at Rutgers University.

This event is open to members of the NYU community. Please register by clicking this RSVP link.