Cynthia Van Der Werf Cuadros

Cynthia Van Der Werf Cuadros

Economist

  • Inter-American Development Bank

Cynthia van der Werf is an Economist at the Migration Unit of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Previously she was Assistant Professor at Louisiana State University. She earned her Ph.D. in Economics in 2020 from the University of California, Davis. Her research focuses on the economic integration of immigrants and the spillovers between newcomers and natives. Currently, she is studying whether the timing of language acquisition affects adult refugees’ dynamic labor market outcomes of adult refugees in Denmark; her findings shed light on the effect of language skills on the likelihood of being employed, earnings trajectories, and occupation in the short and long run. In other research, she is investigating the impact of the inflow of refugees on the U.S. education system. In particular, she is interested in establishing if an inflow of refugees changes native's school choice and in determining if it affects the quality of the education they receive. 

Cynthia Van Der Werf Cuadros's content

The Impact of Refugees on Native Students’ Academic Achievement and Post-secondary Education
In this paper, Cynthia van der Werf studies how the largest inflow of refugees in U.S. history –Indochinese refugees at the end of the Vietnam War – affected U.S. children by examining whether native children’s academic achievement was lower in ZIP Codes with higher shares of refugees using the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS88), the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and U.S. Census data.
The Impact of Refugees on Native Students' Academic Achievement and Post-Secondary Education
In this paper, Cynthia van der Werf studies how the largest inflow of refugees in U.S. history affected U.S. children. Cynthia's paper also examines whether native children’s academic achievement was lower in ZIP Codes with higher shares of refugees using the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS88) and U.S. Census data.