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on Economics of Human Migration |
| By: | Shahin Yaqub |
| Abstract: | This paper studies child migration in Argentina, Chile and South Africa. It defines child migrants as under 18 year olds whose usual residence was in a different country or province five years prior to census. The paper estimates the scale of child migration; compares relative magnitudes of internal and international migration; and considers sensitivity to alternative definitions of migration. Second, it examines family structures within which migrant children live at destinations, defining children who are co-resident with adult parents and siblings as dependent, and those outside of these close family members, as independent. Third, the internal/international and in/dependent distinctions are analysed jointly to describe some social-economic characteristics of the four sub-groups of migrant children. |
| Keywords: | migrant children; migrant families; migration; unaccompanied children; |
| JEL: | F22 |
| Date: | 2009 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucf:indipa:indipa09/4&r=mig |
| By: | Mendola, Mariapia; Carletto, Gero |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the role of male-dominated international migration in shaping labor market outcomes by gender in migrant-sending households in Albania. Using detailed information on family migration experience from the latest Living Standards Measurement Study survey, the authors find that male and female labor supplies respond differently to the current and past migration episodes of household members. Controlling for the potential endogeneity of migration and for the income (remittances) effect, the estimates show that having a migrant abroad decreases female paid labor supply and increases unpaid work. However, women with past family migration experience are significantly more likely to engage in self-employment and less likely to supply unpaid work. The same relationships do not hold for men. These findings suggest that over time male-dominated Albanian migration may lead to women's empowerment in access to income-earning opportunities at the origin. |
| Keywords: | Labor Markets,Population Policies,Labor Policies,Access to Finance,Gender and Development |
| Date: | 2009–04–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4900&r=mig |
| By: | Jennifer Hunt |
| Abstract: | Using the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates, I examine how immigrants perform relative to natives in activities likely to increase U.S. productivity, according to the type of visa on which they first entered the United States. Immigrants who first entered on a student/trainee visa or a temporary work visa have a large advantage over natives in wages, patenting, commercializing or licensing patents, and publishing. In general, this advantage is explained by immigrants' higher education and field of study, but this is not the case for publishing, and immigrants are more likely to start companies than natives with similar education. Immigrants without U.S. education and who arrived at older ages suffer a wage handicap, which offsets savings to the United States from their having completed more education abroad. Immigrants who entered with legal permanent residence do not outperform natives for any of the outcomes considered. |
| JEL: | J61 O31 |
| Date: | 2009–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14920&r=mig |
| By: | Claire Naiditch (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - CNRS : UMR8174 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - Paris I); Radu Vranceanu (Department of Economics - ESSEC) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes international migrations when migrants invest part of their income in their origin country. This investment contributes to increase capital intensity and wages in the origin country, thus reducing the scope for migrating. We show that a non-total migratory equilibrium can exist if the foreign wage is not too high, and/or migratory and transfer costs are not too low. Exogenous shocks, such as an increase in the foreign wage, lead to an increase in optimal remittances per migrant, and a higher wage in the origin country. Yet the net effect on the equilibrium number of migrants is positive. Hence, in equilibrium, optimal remittances and number of migrants are positively related. We use data from twenty fiÂ…ve countries from Eastern Europe and Central Asia in 2000 in order to test for this implication of our model. OLS and bootstrap estimates put forward a positive elasticity of the number of migrants with respect to remittances per migrant. Policy implications follow. |
| Keywords: | Remittances, Investment motive, Migratory Policy. |
| Date: | 2009–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:cesptp:halshs-00376472_v1&r=mig |
| By: | Brenke, Karl; Yuksel, Mutlu; Zimmermann, Klaus F |
| Abstract: | The numbers of migrants from the accessions countries have clearly increased since the enlargement of the EU in 2004. Following enlargement, the net inflow of EU8 immigrants has become 2.5 times larger than the four-year period before enlargement. Poles constitute the largest immigrant group among the EU8 immigrants: since enlargement, 63% of all immigrants and 71% of EU8 immigrants are from Poland. This chapter presents new evidence on the impact of immigrant flow from EU8 countries on the German labor market since EU enlargement. Unlike other EU countries, Germany has not immediately opened up its labor market for immigrants from the new member states. Nevertheless, our analysis documents a substantial inflow and suggests that the composition of EU8 immigrants has changed since EU enlargement. The majority of the new EU8 immigrants are male and young, and they are less educated compared to previous immigrant groups. We also find that recent EU8 immigrants are more likely to be self-employed than employed as a wage earner. Furthermore, these recent EU8 immigrants earn less conditional on being employed or self-employed. Our findings suggest that these recent EU8 immigrants are more likely to compete with immigrants from outside of Europe for low-skilled jobs instead of competing with German natives. While Germany needs high-skilled immigrants, our analysis suggests that the new EU8 immigrants only replace non-EU immigrants in low-skilled jobs. These results underline the importance of more open immigration policies targeting high-skilled immigrants. The current policy not only cannot attract the required high-skilled workforce, but also cannot avoid the attraction of low-skilled immigrants, and is a complete failure. |
| Keywords: | employment; EU enlargement; international migration; wages |
| JEL: | E24 F22 J61 |
| Date: | 2009–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:7274&r=mig |
| By: | Björn Alecke; Timo Mitze; Gerhard Untiedt |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses the causal linkages between regional labour market variables and internal migration flows among German states between 1991–2006. We adopt a Panel VAR approach to identify the feedback effects among the variables and analyse the dynamic properties of the system through impulseresponse functions.We also use the model to track the evolution of the particular East-West migration since re-unification aiming to shed more light on the East German “empirical puzzle”, characterized by lower migration responses than expected from the regional labour market position relative to the West. We indeed get evidence for such a puzzle throughout the mid-1990s, which is likely to be caused by huge West-East income transfers, a fast exogenously driven wage convergence and the possibility of East-West commuting. However, we also observe an inversion of this relationship for later periods:That is, along with a second wave of East-West movements around 2001 net flows out of East Germany were much higher than expected after controlling for its weak labour market and macroeconomic performance. Since this second wave is also accompanied by a gradual fading out of economic distortions, this supports the view of “repressed” migration flows for that period. |
| Keywords: | Internal migration, Panel VAR, System GMM |
| JEL: | C33 J61 R23 |
| Date: | 2009–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rwi:repape:0096&r=mig |
| By: | Barbone, Luca; Bontch-Osmolovsky, Misha; Zaidi, Salman |
| Abstract: | Despite the purported surge in internal migration following the 2004 enlargement of the European Union, data from the 2006 European Union Survey of Income and Living Conditions show that internal migrants are a relatively small share of the European Union's population. Depending on the exact definition used, only about 1 to 2 percent of the population of European Union-13 countries (members prior to the 2004 enlargement, not including Germany and Luxembourg) were born in other European Union countries, while the corresponding share for European Union-4 countries (Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Slovakia) is even lower. By contrast, about 6 percent of the population of European Union-13 countries was born outside the European Union. On examining the demographic and socio-economic background of the migrant population (both from within as well as outside the European Union), this paper finds that migrants tend to include a concentration of both low as well as highly educated workers. Both sets of migrants uniformly contribute to raising the working-age population of receiving countries. Using data on average incomes and taxes paid and benefits received by migrant and non-migrant households, the authors find no evidence to support the contention that migrant workers contribute much less in taxes than the native-born population, or consume significantly higher benefits. On the contrary, our calculations suggest that migrant workers make a net contribution of approximately 42 billion euros to the national tax and benefit systems of European Union-13 countries. |
| Keywords: | Population Policies,Gender and Law,,Gender and Law,Access to Finance |
| Date: | 2009–04–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4899&r=mig |
| By: | Peter B. Dixon; Martin Johnson; Maureen T. Rimmer |
| Abstract: | We use an economy-wide model to analyze the effects of three broad programs to reduce illegal immigrants in U.S. employment: tighter border security; taxes on employers; and vigorous prosecution of employers. After looking at macroeconomic, industry and occupational effects, we decompose the welfare effect for legal residents into six parts covering changes in: producer surplus and illegal wage rates; skilled employment opportunities for natives; aggregate capital; aggregate legal employment; the terms of trade; and public expenditure. The type of program matters. Our analysis suggests a prima facie case in favor of taxes on employers. |
| Keywords: | Illegal immigration dynamic modeling U S immigration policy |
| JEL: | J61 C68 |
| Date: | 2008–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cop:wpaper:g-183&r=mig |
| By: | Jean J., GABSZEWICZ (UNIVERSITE CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN, Department of Economics); Salome, GVETADZE; Didier, LAUSSEL; Patrice, PIERETTI |
| Abstract: | The aim of this paper is to develop a dynamic model of migrations, in which migration is driven by size asymmetries between countries and by the relative preferences of consumers between private consumption and consumption of public goods. The dynamic trajectories heavily depend on the degree of attractiveness for public goods. We show that monotone migrations require sufficiently strong preferences for public goods, and can only be sustained from the small of the large countries. We identify the threshold value of the public goodsÕ intensity of preferences guaranteeing the survival of the small country. For weaker preference intensities, oscillating migrations may rise, but they finally converge to situation where both countries are of equal size |
| Keywords: | Migration; public goods; income tax |
| JEL: | H |
| Date: | 2008–12–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ctl:louvec:2008049&r=mig |
| By: | Jan Brenner |
| Abstract: | In many economic models a central variable of interest is lifetime or permanent income which is not observed in survey data sets and typically proxied by annual income information. To assess the quality of such approximations, we use a unique source of lifetime earnings – the German pension system – and focus on two important issues that have been largely ignored in the existing literature. The first is how to deal with zero income observations in the analysis of women.The second is whether these approximations differ between natives and guest workers. For female earners, we find that estimates of the associations between current and lifetime income are highly sensitive to the treatment of zero earnings. The reason turns out to be the highly cyclical nature of the labor supply behavior of mothers. Furthermore, immigrants’ income proxies are prone to significantly larger attenuation biases over the entire life-cycle. This result is explained by the larger share of annual income variance attributable to the transitory income component for immigrants.Averaging income over up to 15 years alleviates the attenuation bias as well as the difference in biases between natives and guest workers. |
| Keywords: | Generalized errors-in-variables model, life-cycle bias, lifetime income, guest workers |
| JEL: | C10 C50 J61 |
| Date: | 2009–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rwi:repape:0095&r=mig |
| By: | Pettersson-Lidbom, Per (Departmet of Economics, Stockholm University); Skogman Thoursie, Peter (IFAU - Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we provide evidence of whether child spacing affects the future success of children. As an exogenous source of variation in child spacing, we make use of the introduction of an administrative rule in the parental leave benefit system in Sweden. This rule made it possible for a woman to retain her previous high level of parental leave benefits, i.e., 90 percent wage replacement, without entering the labor market between births provided that the interval between the births did not exceed 24 months. The rule had a much larger effect on the birth spacing behavior for native-born mothers compared to foreign-born mothers due to their differential attachment to the labor market. We find that the rule caused a reduction in spacing among native-born mothers as compared to the foreign-born mothers. For individuals born by native-born mothers, the reform also caused a decrease in educational attainment. Thus, this suggests that the effect of spacing children closer has a negative impact on children’s future outcomes. We provide additional evidence that this is likely due to the strong effects of early environment on the capacity for human skill development as discussed by Knutsen et al. (2006). |
| Keywords: | Child spacing; parental leave; child school performance |
| JEL: | J13 J18 |
| Date: | 2009–03–31 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2009_007&r=mig |
| By: | Ron Johnston; Michael Poulsen; James Forrest |
| Abstract: | Much work on residential segregation in urban areas has focused on aspatial indices of urban residential segregation, largely ignoring locational aspects of the degree of spatial separation of different ethnic groups. The adoption of measures of global and local spatial autocorrelation has recently been suggested as a way of introducing a more explicit spatial approach to studying segregation. This paper uses two of those measures – Moran’s I and Getis and Ord’s G* – to explore segregation of the four main ethnic groups in Auckland, New Zealand’s largest and most multi-ethnic city, at the four most recent censuses held there. They are used to identify the clusters of census reporting units (meshblocks) where each group is significantly over- and under-represented, and to chart the degree of segregation within such clusters. |
| Keywords: | segregation, ethnicity, Auckland, local statistics |
| JEL: | R1 |
| Date: | 2009–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bri:cmpowp:09/214&r=mig |
| By: | Ron Johnston; Michael Poulsen; James Forrest |
| Abstract: | Much has been written about ethnic residential segregation in urban areas, almost all of it deploying single-index numbers to measure the degree of segregation. These give very little detailed appreciation of the extent to which different ethnic groups live apart from each other, and where. This paper suggests that a combination of measures derived from local spatial statistics, which identify the geography of clustering, and a typology of residential areas, which describes the population composition of each area, provides much greater insight into the nature and extent of segregation. Data for London in 2001 illustrate the potential of this approach. |
| Keywords: | segregation, ethnicity, London, local statistics |
| JEL: | R1 |
| Date: | 2009–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bri:cmpowp:09/213&r=mig |