License to drive: State driver’s licensing laws and the travel of unauthorized immigrants

Since 1993, eighteen states and the District of Columbia have adopted laws allowing unauthorized immigrants to acquire driver’s licenses. California is one of these states, passing the Safe and Responsible Drive Act (AB 60) in 2013. In this paper, we examine the relationship between the adoption of state driver’s licensing laws and the commute mode of unauthorized immigrants. We focus specifically on the proportion of unauthorized Latin American immigrants in California who commute by car, drive alone to work, and commute by public transit, testing a number of model specifications and proxies for identifying undocumented immigrant residents. We find that the implementation of AB 60 was associated with a 2.0 percentage-point increase in car commuting and a 4.2 percentage-point increase in driving to work alone by unauthorized immigrants. Results also show a 1.4 percentage-point decline in the rate of commuting by public transit after AB 60′s implementation. This drop in transit use, however, was less statistically robust than findings regarding car commuting.