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on Economics of Human Migration |
| By: | Carolyn Moehling (Rutgers University, NBER); Anne Morrison Piehl (Rutgers University, NBER) |
| Abstract: | Research on crime in the late 20th century has consistently shown, that despite the public rhetoric, immigrants have lower rates of involvement in criminal activity than natives. The earliest studies of immigration and crime conducted at the beginning of the 20th century produced similar conclusions. We show, however, that the empirical findings of these early studies suffer from a form of aggregation bias due to the very different age distributions of the native and immigrant populations. We find that in 1904 prison commitment rates for more serious crimes were quite similar for the two nativity groups for all ages except ages 18 and 19 when the commitment rate for immigrants was higher than for the native born. By 1930, immigrants were less likely than natives to be committed to state and federal prisons at all ages 20 and older. But this advantage disappears when one looks at commitments for violent offenses. Immigrants in their late teens, in fact, were more likely than their native counterparts to be incarcerated for violent offenses. |
| Keywords: | immigration, crime, prison |
| JEL: | J1 K4 N3 |
| Date: | 2007–08–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rut:rutres:200704&r=mig |
| By: | Lynne G. Zucker; Michael R. Darby |
| Abstract: | We follow the careers 1981-2004 of 5401 star scientists listed in ISI HighlyCitedSM as most highly cited by their peers. Their number in a US region or a top-25 science and technology (S&T) country significantly increases the probability of firm entry in the S&T field in which they are working. Stars, rather than their disembodied discoveries, are key for high-tech entry. Stars become more concentrated over time, moving disproportionately from areas with few peers in their discipline to many -- except for a countercurrent of some foreign-born American stars returning home. High impact articles and university articles all tend to diffuse. America has 62 percent of the world's stars as residents, primarily because of its research universities which produce them. Migration plays a significant role in some developing countries. |
| JEL: | J61 L26 O14 O31 |
| Date: | 2007–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13547&r=mig |
| By: | Vincenzo Caponi (Ryerson University, Canada and IZA and The Rimini Centre for Economics Analysis, Rimini, Italy.) |
| Abstract: | Building on Borjas (1993) I develop an intergenerational model of self-selection of migration and education that allows for a more complex selection mechanism. In particular, it allows for the possibility that immigrants are selected differently depending on the schooling level they choose. As in Mayer (2005) I assume that agents are endowed with two abilities and use the intergenerational structure of the model to infer potential earnings of a person for different levels of education and in different countries. This makes it possible to quantify the ability or self selection bias of estimates of the return to education and migration. The model is estimated using data on Mexicans in the US from the CPS and on Mexicans residents in Mexico from the Mexican census. The findings are that there is a significant loss of human capital faced by immigrants that is not transmitted to their children. While immigrants are observed to earn less because they find it difficult to adapt their skills to the host country, their children earn more because they can inherit all the abilities of their parents, including that part that could not be used for producing earnings. Moreover, Mayer (2005) proves that the positive correlation between the two abilities creates a positive correlation between parentsÕ earnings and the probability that children attend college. In this paper, I find that this result is reinforced for migrants when they care about their children. In the case of immigrants, parents with larger amounts of intellectual ability tend to migrate more and tend to choose to remain high school educated. However, they migrate with the expectation of their children becoming college educated. Therefore, measures that rely on the earnings performance and educational attainment of immigrants underestimate the amount of human capital they bring into the host country. |
| JEL: | F22 J24 J61 |
| Date: | 2007–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rim:rimwps:20-07&r=mig |
| By: | Martine Rutten (Netherlands Ministry of Finance and Erasmus University) |
| Abstract: | Despite rapid economic and social development of the Maldives, the vulnerability of the island population in terms of poverty remains high. Using household panel data for the period 1997/98 Ð 2004 we show that, although the majority of the poor manages to escape from poverty, a substantial part of the non-poor falls back into poverty at the same time. Using Logit regression analysis, the most influential determinants of escaping household poverty are shown to be: the level of education, participation in community activities, and the proportion of adults employed. Factors that have the largest impact on impeding a poverty escape are: the proportion of household members not working due to bad health, living in the North, and the proportion of female household members. The former two factors, in addition to household size, are also most influential on the odds of falling into poverty. Working in tourism, or the public sector, and taking out a loan to invest are important factors that prevent households from falling into poverty. Policy implications of these results are not only relevant at government level but also at household level. The government may consider paying more attention to the development of the two Northern regions, improve access to good quality education and health care, and further develop (private sector) tourism across the country. Household coping strategies involve investing in education, entering the labour market (especially in tourism and the public sector) and family planning. |
| Keywords: | medical migration, brain drain, doctor migration, nurse migration |
| JEL: | F22 I1 |
| Date: | 2007–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lnz:wpaper:20070803&r=mig |
| By: | Martine Rutten (Netherlands Ministry of Finance and Erasmus University) |
| Abstract: | This paper seeks to determine the macro-economic impacts of migration of skilled medical personnel from a receiving countryÕs perspective, taking the UK as an archetype OECD economy that imports medical services. The resource allocation issues have been explored in theory, by further developing the Rybczynski theorem and empirically, using a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model with an extended health component. The main finding is that importing foreign doctors and nurses into the UK yields higher overall welfare gains compared to a generic increase in the NHS budget. Welfare gains rise in the case of wage protection. |
| Keywords: | medical migration, immigrant health care workers, migrant nurses, migrant doctors |
| JEL: | F22 I1 |
| Date: | 2007–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lnz:wpaper:20070804&r=mig |
| By: | Brücker, Herbert (Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany]); Defoort, Cecily |
| Abstract: | "This paper analyses the (self-)selection of migrants between countries which have substantial differences in the inequality of earnings and income levels. In an extended version of the Roy-model we consider migration costs, which tend to grow less than proportional with the income level. As a consequence, migrants can be favourably self-selected although the inequality of earnings is larger in the destination relative to the sending country. Based on a novel panel data set, covering migration from 143 sending countries all over the world into the 6 main receiving countries in the OECD from 1975 to 2000, we examine the factors which drive the selection bias of the migrant population empirically. The descriptive statistics indicate that migrants tend to be positively (self-)selected although the inequality in earnings is larger in the destination relative to the sending countries. Our estimation results suggest that both, a higher inequality in the distribution of earnings in the receiving and the sending country increases the skill level of the migrant population relative to that of the population in the sending countries. Moreover, the positive selection bias decreases with the income level of the sending country at a given income differential. Finally, migration barriers and distance affect the selection bias positively." (author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en)) |
| JEL: | F |
| Date: | 2007–10–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iab:iabdpa:200726&r=mig |
| By: | Lundborg, Per (Stockholm University Linnaeus Center for Integration Studies - SULCIS) |
| Abstract: | While differences in days in unemployment even out after some time after immigration, wage differences between immigrants and natives remain in the long run. Employment assimilation is more or less immediate for labour immigrants, while it takes approximately twenty years for non-labour immigrants to obtain the same employment status as natives and labour immigrants. We also find that the high educated non-labour immigrants’ income of work lag behind those of high educated natives more than wages of low educated non-labour immigrants do to low educated natives. Thus, low educated immigrants assimilate faster than high educated. Similarly, male non-labour immigrants’ work income lag behind male natives’ income more than female non-labour immigrants’ income do to female natives’ income. Thus, female immigrants assimilate faster than male immigrants. |
| Keywords: | Immigrants; earnings assimilation; integration |
| JEL: | J31 J61 |
| Date: | 2007–10–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:sulcis:2007_005&r=mig |
| By: | Adriana Sánchez Hugalde (Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB); Universitat de Barcelona (UB)) |
| Abstract: | This empirical work studies the influence of immigrant students on individuals’ school choice in one of the most populated regions in Spain: Catalonia. It has estimated, following the Poisson model, the probability that a certain school, which immigrant students are already attending, may be chosen by natives as well as by immigrants, respectively. The information provided by the Catalonia School Department presents school characteristics of all the primary and secondary schools in Catalonia during the 2001/02 and 2002/03 school years. The results obtained support the evidence that Catalonia native families avoid schools attended by immigrants. Natives certainly prefer not to interact with immigrants. Private schools are more successful in avoiding immigrants. Finally, the main reason for non-natives’ choice is the presence of other non-natives in the same school. |
| Keywords: | School Choice, Immigration |
| JEL: | I21 J15 |
| Date: | 2007 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ieb:wpaper:2007/4/doc2007-4&r=mig |
| By: | Baranowska, Anna; Bukowski, Maciej; Bober, Magda; Lewandowski, Piotr; Magda, Iga; Sarzalska, Malgorzata; Szydlowski, Arkadiusz; Zawistowski, Julian |
| Abstract: | This book constitutes a follow-up and extension of Employment in Poland 2005. In this issue we analyse the influence of demand-side factors on Polish labour market and especially so from the macroeconomic and regional perspectives. We begin with macroeconomic look at the labour markets in eight – out of ten – states which joined the EU in 2004. We focus on identifying aggregate disturbances which had a crucial influence on the economic fluctuations within the CEE region in the period 1994-2005, and we assess to what extent these disturbances are responsible for different dynamics of unemployment and employment trends in the examined countries and to what extent different fiscal and monetary approaches adopted at that time contributed to remedy these disturbances. The key finding resulting is that the relatively most significant decrease in employment and increase in unemployment levels in Europe, which came about in Poland after the year 2000, are due to the idiosyncratic decrease in return on capital and total factor productivity [TFP] dynamics. We also find that, although the policy-mix adopted in the above period was not the direct cause for the slowdown, its role in accommodating the shock was probably moderately negative. Then we study regional differences in the labour market in Poland in the period 2000-2005. We analyse aggregate data and identify microeconomic factors affecting trends in job creation and destruction. We group the NUTS4 regions in Poland in six homogenous clusters and find that in the period 2000-2005 no significant changes in the labour market indicators occurred either between clusters or between voivodeships (NUTS2 regions). This is so because the direction and depth of fluctuations on the regional scale were generally shaped by aggregate shocks which affected the economy as a whole. Moreover, the above period saw a greater differentiation in terms of productivity and thus, in most parts of Poland, increasing employment and unemployment rates are due to the development of labour-intensive manufacturing. We argue that only the largest urban conglomerations in Poland have adopted the development model which supports high economic growth in medium and long term. In third part of the study we focus on spatial mobility of Polish workers. In case of both internal and international migrations we demonstrate that economic factors determine significantly decisions about changing place of residence and that the key incentive to migrate is higher wages in the destination location and a relatively worse situation in the labour market in the region of origin. We also estimate the scale of international migration from Poland, which indicate that the number of people who stayed abroad for more than two months in the year 2005 was higher by approximately 165,000-379,000 people than before EU accession, due to one-time increase in migration flows. Moreover, we point out that international migration is mostly seasonal and that emigrants retain strong ties with their homeland. As for internal migration, we argue that its aggregate intensity is relatively modest and we emphasise that although in general the population moves from smaller to larger conglomerates, the limited scale of these movements makes the progress in urbanisation being slow and agglomerations less numerous than in other EU member states. In the long run, this may constitute an obstacle for real convergence to the most developed EU countries. Finally we scrutinize work in the non-observed economy (NOE) in Poland. According to various methodologies we asses the NOE output at 15-30 per cent of the GDP, and we find that the main reasons behind the existence of the grey economy in Poland are overly burdensome fiscal policy and excessively restrictive economic regulations. We close the report with demonstrating links between areas we studied and implications for labour market and economic policy in Poland. |
| Keywords: | Poland; unemployment; employment; transition countries; labour market shocks; unemployment persistance; regional disparities; labour migration; informal employment |
| JEL: | J23 E24 R23 |
| Date: | 2006–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:5524&r=mig |