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on Economics of Human Migration |
| By: | Amuedo-Dorantes, Catalina (San Diego State University, California); Bansak, Cynthia (St. Lawrence University) |
| Abstract: | This paper tests whether amnesty, a provision of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), affected the labor market outcomes of the legalized population. Using the Legalized Population Survey (LPS) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) from 1987-1992, a quasi-experimental framework is developed to assess the differential impact of amnesty on the legalized population relative to a comparison group. After the implementation of the amnesty program, employment fell and unemployment rose for newly legalized men relative to the comparison group of already legal U.S. residents. For women, employment also fell and transitions out of the workforce increased among the newly legalized population. Increasing returns to skill, as captured by English proficiency, only played an important role in explaining the employment of newly legalized women. Finally, newly legalized men and women enjoyed higher wage growth rates than their working native counterparts, perhaps owing to their comparatively growing returns to U.S. educational attainment over this period. |
| Keywords: | amnesty, legalization, labor market, Legalized Population Survey |
| JEL: | J6 |
| Date: | 2011–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5576&r=mig |
| By: | Max Nathan |
| Abstract: | British cities have a surprisingly long history of cultural diversity. Recently they have become significantly more multicultural, with 'super-diversity' emerging in many urban neighbourhoods. Public interest in these changes is high, but there has been little research assessing their impacts. This paper makes two contributions to the field. First, it assembles new data on UK urban areas 2001-6, using an innovative cultural-ethno-linguistic (CEL) measure of cultural diversity alongside more traditional measures. Second, it tests links between diversity, wages and employment rates at the urban level. As suggested by theory and international evidence, I find some positive associations between super-diversity and UK urban economic performance. |
| Keywords: | cities, demography, migration, culture, cultural diversity, super-diversity, urbaneconomies, growth |
| JEL: | J15 J61 O18 R11 R23 |
| Date: | 2011–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:sercdp:0068&r=mig |
| By: | Max Nathan |
| Abstract: | British cities are becoming more culturally diverse, with migration a main driver. Is this growing diversity good for urban economies? This paper explores, using a new 16-year panel of UK cities. Over time, net migration affects both local labour markets and the wider economy. Average labour market impacts appear neutral. Dynamic effects may be positive on UK-born workers' productivity and wages (via production complementarities for higher skill workers) or negative on employment (if migrants progressively displace lower-skill natives from specific sectors). The results, which survive causality checks, suggest both processes are operating in British cities. Long-term industrial decline and casualisation of entry-level jobs help explain the employment findings. |
| Keywords: | cities, migration, cultural diversity, labour markets, productivity, urban economics |
| JEL: | D24 J15 J61 O18 R11 R23 |
| Date: | 2011–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:sercdp:0067&r=mig |
| By: | Fougère, Denis (CREST-INSEE); Kramarz, Francis (CREST-INSEE); Rathelot, Roland (CREST); Safi, Mirna (CREST-INSEE) |
| Abstract: | Our study examines the empirical links between social housing policy and location choices of immigrants in France. More specifically, we characterize the main individual and contextual determinants of the probability for immigrants to live in a HLM (habitations à loyer modéré, dwelling with a moderate rent), which is the main public housing policy in France. For that purpose, we use individual information coming from large (one-fourth) extracts of the French population censuses conducted by INSEE (Paris) in 1982, 1990, and 1999. Our estimates show that, in general, migrants live more frequently in social housing than French natives, other observables being equal. In particular, this probability is higher for migrants from Turkey, Morocco, Southeast Asia, Algeria, Tunisia and Sub-Saharan Africa (in descending order). We find also that migrants of all origins live less often in a HLM when the city has plenty of social housing and when the fraction of natives is high. |
| Keywords: | social magnets, migration, social housing |
| JEL: | J61 I38 R38 |
| Date: | 2011–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5557&r=mig |
| By: | Diaz-Serrano, Luis (Universitat Rovira i Virgili); Raya, Josep M. (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we investigate whether evidence of discriminatory treatment against immigrants in the Spanish mortgage market exists. More specifically, we test whether, ceteris paribus, immigrant borrowers tend to be charged with higher interest rates on their mortgages than their Spanish born counterparts. To do so, we use a unique dataset on granted mortgages that contains information not only regarding the conditions of the loan but also the socio-economic characteristics of the mortgagors. We observe that immigrants are systematically charged with higher interest rates. We apply the well known Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition to measure the extent to which this disparate treatment of lenders in mortgage pricing against immigrants is due to discrimination. Our results indicate that approximately two thirds of the gap in the interest rate between Spanish born and immigrant borrowers can be attributed to discriminatory treatment. |
| Keywords: | immigration, discrimination, mortgage pricing, housing market |
| JEL: | R21 G21 J14 |
| Date: | 2011–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5578&r=mig |
| By: | Nicodemo, Catia (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona); Ramos, Raul (University of Barcelona) |
| Abstract: | The objective of the study is to quantify the wage gap between native and immigrant women in Spain taking into account differences in their characteristics and the need to control for common support. Using the microdata from the Social Security Records (MCVL) and with a matching procedure of Ñopo (2008) we analysed the decomposition of the wage gap. The advantage of this procedure is that we can simultaneously estimate the common support and the mean counterfactual wage for the women on the common support. In addition, we can describe not only differences at the mean, but along the entire wage distribution. The results obtained indicate that, on average, immigrants women earn less than native in the Spanish labour market. This wage gap is bigger when we analyse the developing countries, but our main finding is that part of this wage gap is related to difference in common supports, i.e. immigrant women have different characteristics than native women that make them less attractive in the labour market. If the need to control for common support is neglected, estimates of the wage gap will be biased. |
| Keywords: | common support, quantile regression, immigration, counterfactual decomposition |
| JEL: | J16 J31 C2 C3 |
| Date: | 2011–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5571&r=mig |
| By: | Budy Resosudarmo; Daniel Suryadarma |
| Abstract: | Developing countries are experiencing unprecedented levels of urbanization. Although most of these movements are motivated by economic reasons, they could affect the human capital accumulation of the children who follow their parents to the cities. This paper estimates the causal effect of permanently migrating as a child from a rural area to an urban area on human capital outcomes. To our knowledge, this paper is one of only several papers, especially in the context of a developing country, which is able to estimate the causal effect of migration. We utilize a recent survey of urban-rural migrants in Indonesia and merge it with a nationally representative survey to create a dataset that contains migrants in urban areas and non-migrants in rural areas who were born in the same rural districts. We then employ a measure of district-level propensity to migrate, calculated from the Indonesian intercensal survey, as an instrument. We find that childhood migration to urban areas increase education attainment by about 4.5 years by the time these individuals are adults. In addition, the childhood migrants face a lower probability to be underweight by about 15 percentage points as adults. However, we find no statistically significant effect on height, which is a measure of long-term nutritional intake, and we only find a weak effect on the probability to be obese. Therefore, our results suggest a permanent, positive, and large effect of childhood migration on education attainment and some health measures. In addition, our results can rule out any negative effect on health. |
| Keywords: | migration, education, health |
| JEL: | I12 I21 O15 R23 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pas:papers:2011-02&r=mig |
| By: | Facchini, Giovanni (Erasmus University Rotterdam); Steinhardt, Max (Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI)) |
| Abstract: | Immigration is one of the most hotly debated policy issues in the United States today. Despite marked divergence of opinions within political parties, several important immigration reforms were introduced in the post 1965 era. The purpose of this paper is to systematically analyze the drivers of congressional voting behavior on immigration policy during the period 1970-2006, and in particular, to assess the role of economic factors at the district level. Our findings provide robust evidence that representatives of more skilled labor abundant constituencies are more likely to support an open immigration policy concerning unskilled labor. Thus, a simple factor-proportions-analysis model provides useful insights regarding the policy making process on one of the most controversial facets of globalization. |
| Keywords: | immigration policy, voting, political economy |
| JEL: | F22 J61 |
| Date: | 2011–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5561&r=mig |
| By: | Simone Bertoli; Jesús Fernández-HuertasMoraga |
| Abstract: | The scale of migration ows between two countries does not only depend on their relative attractiveness, but also on the one of alternative destinations. Following the trade literature, we term the influence exerted by other destinations on bilateral flows as Multilateral Resistance to Migration, and we show how it can be accounted for when estimating the determinants of bilateral migration flows in the context of a general individual random utility maximization model. We propose the use of the Common Correlated Effects estimator (Pesaran, 2006) and apply it to high-frequency data on the Spanish immigration boom between 1997 and 2009. Compared to more restrictive estimation strategies developed in the literature, the bias goes in the expected direction: we find a smaller effect of GDP per capita and a larger eect of migration policies on migration ows. |
| Date: | 2011–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fda:fdaddt:2011-04&r=mig |
| By: | Darwin Ugarte; Vincenzo Verardi (Center for Research in the Economics of Development, University of Namur) |
| Abstract: | Recent evidence suggests that aid induces migration. However, total migration is quite general from a policy perspective since what explains the welfare consequences of migration is the extent of emigration selection. In this paper we ask whether skilled or unskilled migration is more sensitive to aid and to the different mechanisms through which aid may affect self-selection among international emigrants. We show that aid induces positive selection. And that the effect on skilled migration is larger than the effect on unskilled migration. As possible mechanisms to explain the relation, we find that aid induces skilled migration by reducing transaction and information costs, by improving the distribution of schooling, and by helping to overcome liquidity constraints. |
| Keywords: | Foreign aid, International migration, Self-selection, Brain drain. |
| JEL: | F35 F22 C23 |
| Date: | 2010–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nam:wpaper:1012&r=mig |
| By: | Nottmeyer, Olga (DIW Berlin) |
| Abstract: | In this paper the hypothesis that partnerships between immigrants and natives are less specialized – in the sense that spouses provide similar working hours per weekday – than those between immigrants is tested. The empirical analysis relies on panel data using a two-limit random effects tobit framework to identify determinants of a gender-neutral specialization index. Results indicate that for immigrants intermarriage is indeed related to less specialization as is better education and smaller diversion in education between spouses. In contrast, children living in the household, as well as being Muslim or Islamic, lead to greater specialization. Intermarried immigrants specialize less presumably due to smaller comparative advantages resulting from positive assortative mating by education and different bargaining positions within the household. Natives, on the other hand, show different patterns: for them the likelihood to specialize increases with intermarriage. This might also results from differences in bargaining strength or be due to adaptation to immigrants’ expected behavior. |
| Keywords: | migration, integration, intermarriage, specialization, division of labor |
| JEL: | J1 J12 |
| Date: | 2011–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5567&r=mig |
| By: | Nguyen, Trang; Purnamasari, Ririn |
| Abstract: | This paper aims to investigate empirically how international migration and remittances in Indonesia, particularly female migration, affect child outcomes and labor supply behavior in sending households. The authors analyze the Indonesia Family Life Survey data set and apply an instrumental variable estimation method, using historical migration networks as instruments for migration and remittance receipts. The study finds that, in Indonesia, the impacts of international migration on sending households are likely to vary depending on the gender of the migrants. On average, migration reduces the working hours of remaining household members, but this effect is not observed in households with female migrants. At the same time, female migration and their remittances tend to reduce child labor. The estimated impacts of migration and remittances on school enrollment are not statistically significant, but this result is interesting in that the directions of the effects can be opposite when the migrant is male or female |
| Keywords: | Population Policies,Gender and Development,Anthropology,Housing&Human Habitats,International Migration |
| Date: | 2011–03–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:5591&r=mig |
| By: | Balli, Faruk; Balli, Hatice, O. |
| Abstract: | We examine the potential welfare gains and channels of income smoothing for Pacific Island Countries (PICs) and nd that, under full risk sharing overall welfare gains across all PICs (particularly, Kiribati, Palau, and Papua New Guinea) are at desirable levels. However, for Australia, the potential welfare gain from risk sharing is almost similar to the gain it obtains if Australia attains full risk sharing with the rest of the OECD countries or with New Zealand alone. We also break down output using the framework of Sorensen and Yosha (1998) to quantify the extent and channels of risk sharing across PICs. For PICs, income-smoothing channels (net factor income and current transfers) play a significant role in buffering the output shock compared to the performance of those channels on smoothing the output shock for OECD countries. Domestic savings also smooth a fair portion of shocks to output, but the extent is much lower compared to that of OECD countries. Further, we analyze the effect of remittances and foreign aid on income smoothing for the PICs exclud- ing Australia and New Zealand. Income smoothing via remittances is highly volatile and significant in recent years, while foreign aid seems to be a stronger and more stable channel for smoothing domestic output shocks for PICs. |
| Keywords: | Foreign Aid; Remittance In ows; International Integration; Income Smoothing; Consumption Smoothing; Pacic Island Countries; Welfare Gains from Risk Sharing. |
| JEL: | F15 E25 E21 |
| Date: | 2010–03–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:29547&r=mig |
| By: | Amuedo-Dorantes, Catalina (San Diego State University, California); Pozo, Susan (Western Michigan University) |
| Abstract: | Due to inadequate savings and binding borrowing constraints, income volatility can make households in developing countries particularly susceptible to economic hardship. We examine the role of remittances in either alleviating or increasing household income volatility using Mexican household level data over the 2000 through 2008 period. We correct for reverse causality and endogeneity and find that while income smoothing does not appear to be the main motive for sending remittances in a non-negligible share of households, remittances do indeed smooth household income on average. Other variables surrounding income volatility are also considered and evaluated. |
| Keywords: | remittances, income smoothing |
| JEL: | F22 O15 O54 |
| Date: | 2011–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5568&r=mig |
| By: | Cécile BATISSE (Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur le Développement International); Nong ZHU (Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique - (Québec)) |
| Abstract: | Cet article étudie l'insertion de ces migrants ruraux sur le marché du travail de la province du Guangdong à partir d'une base de données originales issues d'une enquête sur les paysans-ouvriers (ming gong), réalisée en 2006. A partir de modèles de durée, nous portons une attention particulière aux caractéristiques individuelles, temporelles (évolution de la mobilité dans l'emploi au cours du temps) et spatiales (rôle du lieu d'origine). Nos résultats montrent que les migrants forment un groupe hétérogène du point de vue de leurs caractéristiques individuelles et de leur employabilité dans le delta de la rivière des Perles. L'insertion sur le marché du travail des femmes, des jeunes et des peu qualifiés est facilitée. La proximité géographique du lieu de départ de la migration est également favorable. Nous examinons enfin les déterminants du salaire urbain des paysans-ouvriers qui s'insèrent sur un marché du travail de plus en plus segmenté et fragmenté. / The integration of rural migrants into the urban labor market has become an essential economic issue in today's China. In the context of economic reforms, policies affecting migration in continental China have been redefined, which therefore greatly intensified the internal migration flows. Since the 1980s, the rural depopulation has been essentially linked to the migration of "peasant-workers" (ming gong) who continue to play a key role in the country's transition into a market economy. In this article, we study the integration of these rural migrants into the labor market in the Guangdong province using the original data from a 2006 survey of peasant-workers. Based on duration models estimation, the analysis focuses on the role of different characteristics: personal, temporal (i.e. the course of employment mobility through time) and spatial (i.e. the role of place of origin). Results show that migrants form a heterogeneous group in terms of personal characteristics and employability in the Pearl River delta. Women, the youth and the less qualified are among the advantaged. Geographical proximity also plays a favorable role. Finally, we examine the determinants of the wage in urban areas for peasant-workers who integrated the increasingly segmented and fragmented labor market. |
| Keywords: | paysans-ouvriers, migration, emploi, villes, Chine / peasant workers, urban employment, wages, China |
| JEL: | J61 J31 C41 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdi:wpaper:1246&r=mig |