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on Economics of Human Migration |
| By: | Sylvie Démurger; Marc Gurgand; Li Shi; Yue Ximing |
| Abstract: | In urban China, urban resident annual earnings are 1.3 times larger than long term rural migrant earnings as observed in a nationally representative sample in 2002. Using microsimulation, we decompose this difference into four sources, with particular attention to path dependence and statistical distribution of the estimated effects: (1) different allocation to sectors that pay different wages (sectoral effect); (2) hourly wage disparities across the two populations within sectors (wage effect); (3) different working times within sectors (hours effect); (4) different population structures (population effect). Although sector allocation is extremely contrasted, with very few migrants in the public sector and very few urban residents working as self-employed, this has no clear impact on differential earnings. Indeed, the sectoral effect is not robust to the path followed for the decomposition. We show that the migrant population has a comparative advantage in the private sector: increasing its participation into the public sector would not necessarily improve its average earnings. The second main finding is that the population effect is robust and significantly more important than wage or hours effects. This implies that the main source of disparity between the two populations is pre-market (education opportunities) rather than on-market. |
| Date: | 2008 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pse:psecon:2008-20&r=mig |
| By: | Mitra, Arup; Murayama, Mayumi |
| Abstract: | Based on the recent census data this paper analyses the district level rural to urban migration rates (both intra-state and the inter-state) among males and females separately. Both the rates are closely associated irrespective of whether the migrants originate from the rural areas within the state or outside the state. This would suggest that women usually migrate as accompanists of the males. Though many of the relatively poor and backward states actually show large population mobility, which is primarily in search of a livelihood, the mobility of male population is also seen to be prominent in the relatively advanced states like Maharashtra and Gujarat. Rapid migration of rural females within the boundaries of the states is, however, evident across most of the regions. The social networks, which play an important role in the context of migration are prevalent among the short distance migrants and tend to lose their significance with a rise in the distance between the place of origin and destination though there are some exceptions to this phenomenon. Besides the north-south divide in the Indian context is indeed a significant phenomenon with a few exceptions of metropolitan cities. As regards the effect of factors at the place of destination, prospects for better job opportunities are a major determinant of male migration. Low castes and minority groups tend to pull migration through network effects. Among females also these effects are evident though with the inclusion of the male migration rate they become less significant. Finally the paper brings out the policy implications. |
| Keywords: | Rural-to-urban migration, Poverty, India, 2001 census, Gender, Population movement |
| JEL: | J61 R23 |
| Date: | 2008–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jet:dpaper:dpaper137&r=mig |
| By: | John P. Haisken-DeNew; John P. Haisken-DeNew and Mathias Sinning |
| Abstract: | This paper aims at providing empirical evidence on social exclusion of immigrants in Germany. We demonstrate that when using a conventional definition of the social inclusion index typically applied in the literature, immigrants appear to experience a significant degree of social deprivation and exclusion, confirming much of the economic literature examining the economic assimilation of immigrants in Germany. We propose a weighting scheme that weights components of social inclusion by their subjective contribution to an overall measure of life satisfaction. Using this weighting scheme to calculate an index of social inclusion, we find that immigrants are in fact as "included" as Germans. This result is driven strongly by the disproportionately positive socio- demographic characteristics that immigrants possess as measured by the contribution to their life satisfaction. |
| Keywords: | Social exclusion, international migration, integration |
| JEL: | F22 I31 Z13 |
| Date: | 2007–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rwi:repape:0031&r=mig |
| By: | Kahanec, Martin (IZA); Zaiceva, Anzelika (IZA) |
| Abstract: | The starkly different histories and institutions in the eastern and western member states of the European Union (EU) suggest different roles of being non-native in these two regions. In this paper we study the roles of foreign origin and citizenship in the comparative East-West perspective. Our results indicate that while it is immigrant status that is of key importance in the western EU member states, both immigrant status and citizenship matter in the eastern EU member states, their roles depending on gender. We find some evidence that it is the Russian ethnic minority in Estonia and Latvia that drives the relationships between being non-citizen and labor market outcomes that we find in the eastern EU member states. |
| Keywords: | immigrant, citizenship, earnings, employment, labor market, Eastern Europe |
| JEL: | F22 J15 J61 J71 |
| Date: | 2008–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3420&r=mig |
| By: | S. Longhi (University of Essex); P. Nijkamp (VU University Amsterdam); J. Poot (University of Waikato) |
| Abstract: | The increasing proportion of immigrants in the population of many countries has raised concerns about the ‘absorption capacity’ of the labour market, and fuelled extensive empirical research in countries that attract migrants. In previous papers we synthesized the conclusions of this empirical literature by means of meta-analyses of the impact of immigration on wages and employment of native-born workers. While we have shown that the labour market impacts in terms of wages and employment are rather small, the sample of studies available to generate comparable effect sizes was severely limited by the heterogeneity in study approaches. In the present paper, we take an encompassing approach and consider a broad range of labour market outcomes: wages, employment, unemployment and labour force participation. We compare 45 primary studies published between 1982 and 2007 for a total of 1,572 effect sizes. We trichotomise the various labour market outcomes as benefiting, harming or not affecting the native born, and use an ordered probit model to assess the relationship between this observed impact and key study characteristics such as type of country, methodology, period of investigation and type of migrant. |
| Keywords: | immigration, labour market, factor substitution, comparative research, meta-analysis |
| JEL: | C51 F22 J31 J61 |
| Date: | 2008–03–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wai:pscdps:dp-67&r=mig |
| By: | Brücker, Herbert (IAB, Nürnberg); Jahn, Elke J. (Aarhus School of Business) |
| Abstract: | Based on a wage curve approach we examine the labor market effects of migration in Germany. The wage curve relies on the assumption that wages respond to a change in the unemployment rate, albeit imperfectly. This allows one to derive the wage and employment effects of migration simultaneously in a general equilibrium framework. For the empirical analysis we employ the IABS, a two percent sample of the German labor force. We find that the elasticity of the wage curve is particularly high for young workers and workers with a university degree, while it is low for older workers and workers with a vocational degree. The wage and employment effects of migration are moderate: a 1 percent increase in the German labor force through immigration increases the aggregate unemployment rate by less than 0.1 percentage points and reduces average wages by less 0.1 percent. While native workers benefit from increased wages and lower unemployment, foreign workers are adversely affected. |
| Keywords: | migration, wage curve, labor demand, panel data |
| JEL: | F22 J31 J61 |
| Date: | 2008–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3423&r=mig |
| By: | Chi-Chur Chao; Bharat R. Hazari; Jean-Pierre Laffargue |
| Abstract: | This paper develops a simple model to explain two stylised facts about immigration. First, some countries have a low ratio of migrants in their population, while other wealthy countries have a high number of migrants. In fact such migrants are of the same order of magnitude as their domestic workforce. Secondly, migrants are often segregated in jobs. The domestic residents do not wish to be employed in these jobs due to their unattractive working conditions and payments. The model assumes that domestic residents are all identical in terms of their skills and wealth and furthermore that native and foreign workers have the same skills. However, foreign migrants cannot be excluded from the use of public services, the quality of which decreases due to congestion created or enhanced by migrants. On the basis of our model we show that the stylised facts are consistent with an optimal immigration policy, defined by domestic residents who have neither altruistic feelings nor ethnic prejudice toward foreign migrants. |
| Date: | 2008 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pse:psecon:2008-15&r=mig |