IMMIGRANT RELATIVE WAGES AT THE GREAT RECESSION: EVIDENCE WITH MATCHED EMPLOYER‐EMPLOYEE DATA FOR SPAIN

The article examines relative wages of immigrants in Spain, with a particular focus on the impact of the Great Recession. The empirical analysis is restricted to men and is based on matched employer‐employee microdata and the decomposition techniques of Juhn et al. (1991, 1993) and Fortin et al. (2011). Our results show that the significant native‐immigrant wage gap that exists both in terms of average wages and of differentials along the wage distribution is essentially explained by differences in the endowments of observed characteristics so that, in general, immigrants tend to receive a similar wage treatment than Spaniards with analogous observed attributes. On the other hand, the Great Recession has had a noticeable impact on the relative wages of immigrants, given that the significant increase of the native‐immigrant wage gap observed during the previous expansionary period was mitigated during the economic downturn due to composition effects arising from the severe employment destruction pattern.     

IMMIGRANT EARNINGS: A LONGITUDINAL ANALYSIS

This paper uses the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Australia to analyze the determinants of the level and growth in earnings of adult male immigrants in their first 3.5 years in Australia. The theoretical framework is based on the immigrant adjustment model, which incorporates both the transferability of immigrant skills and selectively in migration. The cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses generate similar findings. The level and relative growth of earnings are higher for immigrants with higher levels of skill and who are economic/skills tested migrants, as distinct from family based and refugee migrants. The analysis indicates that immigrant economic assimilation does occur and that in these data the cross-section provides a good estimate of the longitudinal progress of immigrants. The findings are robust across statistical techniques.     

CROSSING THE BORDER AND MIGRATION DURATION

Policies to deter illegal entry and reduce the number of undocumented immigrants have a complex impact on migration patterns, border crossings, and duration. However, studies generally assume the method of crossing into the United States is exogenous with respect to migration duration. Using data from the Mexican Migration Project, this paper finds that the migrant's decision to hire a coyote (smuggler) to cross the border is endogenous with respect to duration. Instrumental variable estimates provide evidence that migrants who incur the cost of hiring a coyote have longer migration durations as they need to work longer in the United States. The migrants most likely to hire coyotes have less education, little migration experience, and/or come from rural communities. Results suggest that continuing to increase guest worker programs could actually decrease the number of Mexican immigrants in the United States by eliminating the need for coyotes which would reduce migration durations. This would better utilize the immigrant population in the United States by encouraging immigrants to stay while employed and to migrate home when unemployed, with the knowledge they can later return. Reducing coyote use would also reduce income flowing to Mexican cartels which have profited from human smuggling. (JEL O15, J61, J64)     

Length of stay and mental health of the immigrant population in Spain: evidence of the healthy immigrant effect

This article analyses the relationship between how long immigrant populations reside in the country of destination and the state of their mental health. The empirical approach to this relationship relies on data from the Spanish National Health Survey 2011–2012. The results confirm a Healthy Immigrant Effect that tends to decline in accordance with how long the immigrant stays. Immigrants who have been residing for less than 10 years in Spain have better mental health than the national population as a whole. It is important to study health disparities among the foreign population and how these evolve to ensure that it has access to health services and that its health care needs are met.     

Fiscal Implications of Immigration—A Net Present Value Calculation

Focusing on the net fiscal effects, the gain from admitting immigrants is computed for a welfare state with large expenditures and a large tax burden (Sweden). Prices and behavior are held constant, which allows a detailed analysis of the effects of immigration. The present value of future tax revenues minus outlays is potentially large; USD 23,500 per young working‐age immigrant, but an average new immigrant represents a net government loss of USD 20,500. The dominant factors are employment rates and age. For young working‐age immigrants, the “break‐even” participation rate for which the gain would be zero is 60%, well below the empirical rate for this group.     

IMMIGRANT WELFARE RECIPIENCY: RECENT TRENDS AND FUTURE IMPLICATIONS

Using microdata from the 1970 and 1980 U.S. Censuses, this article examines recent trends in immigrant welfare recipiency. Immigrant welfare use increased over the 1970s, both in absolute terms and in comparison to the welfare use of natives. A small number of source country characteristics explain over two-thirds of the large variation in welfare recipiency that exists across national origin groups. Moreover, changes in the average source country characteristics of the foreign-born population between 1970 and 1980 can account for almost all of the increase in immigrant welfare recipiency that occurred over the decade.     

GENDER DIFFERENCES IN NATIVE PREFERENCES TOWARD UNDOCUMENTED AND LEGAL IMMIGRATION: EVIDENCE FROM SAN DIEGO

The literature has noted that native views about legal as opposed to undocumented immigration in the United States differ. Furthermore, native views about immigration are known to vary by gender. Yet, most surveys do not inquire native men and women about their views with regards to the two distinct immigrant groups, thus impeding an analysis of differences in preferences toward legal and undocumented immigrants from the same sample of natives. Using a recent San Diego County survey, we examine differences in native male and female opinions with regard to legal and undocumented immigration and their determinants. Native preferences toward immigration appear to significantly differ by gender as well as according to immigrants' legal status. In addition, public finance and welfare concerns are among the key factors driving native male and female preferences toward legal and undocumented immigration. However, native women's attitudes are also impacted by concerns regarding the social integration and economic assimilation of undocumented immigrants possibly related to the alleged prejudice factor. (JEL J61, F22)     

Is the new immigration less skilled than the old?

This paper analyzes trends in the skills of immigrants to the US in the post-World War II period. Changes in the supply, demand, and institutional factors determining immigration are analyzed for their implications for immigrant skills. During the past 4 decades immigration has shifted from being predominantly European and Canadian in origin to being predominantly Asian and Latin American, and there have been changes in the criteria for rationing immigration visas. Immigrant skills can be analyzed within the context of a model of the supply of immigrants and the US demand for immigrants. Of the Asian immigrants subject to numerical limitation, the proportion who were occupational preference principals declined from 18.2% in 1970, to 11.9% in 1975, to 8.1% in 1981. A growing stock of the foreign-born population who are illegal aliens may lower immigrant quality; for low-skilled workers in neighboring low-income countries the economic incentives for illegal migration are very large. Immigrants from the UK have the highest annual earnings, with Canadian, other European, South Asian, East Asian, and other American immigrants having successively lower earnings. The Mexicans and the Vietnamese have the lowest earnings. Over the period 1950 to 1980, US immigration changed from primarily drawing immigrants from countries whose nationals have high relative earnings in the US primarily drawing immigrants from countries whose nationals do less well. Recent immigrants are less favorably selected on the basis of their level of schooling. The analysis of the relative earnings of immigrants during the 1970s using 3 data files shows there has been little change for white immigrants, an ambiguous pattern for Mexican immgrants, perhaps a small decline for Cuban immigrants, and a small rise for Asian immigrants. Overall, without returning to rationing by country of origin, public policy could raise immigrant skill levels by changing the balance between kinship and the individual's skills in the rationing of visas.     

ESTIMATING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IMMIGRANT AND NATIVE WORKERS IN AUSTRALIA: A PRODUCTION THEORY APPROACH

The impact of immigration on labour markets depends, among other factors, on the substitutability or complementarity between immigrants and natives. This relationship is examined by treating migrant and native labour, along with capital, as inputs in production process. Estimated price elasticities of substitution between immigrants and native labour suggest that in Australian context, an increase in the wage rate of one group of workers leads to an increased demand for the other. The estimated elasticities of substitution between immigrant and native workers and the complementary relationship between immigrants and capital provide an insight into the complex effects of immigration.     

Labour segregation and immigrant and native-born wage distributions in Spain: an analysis using matched employer–employee data

This article carries out an empirical examination of the origin of the differences between immigrant and native-born wage structures in the Spanish labour market. Special attention is given in the analysis to the role played by occupational and workplace segregation of immigrants. Legal immigrants from developing countries exhibit lower mean wages and a more compressed wage structure than native-born workers. By contrast, immigrants from developed countries display higher mean wages and a more dispersed wage structure. The main empirical finding is that the disparities in the wage distributions for the native-born and both groups of immigrants are largely explained by their different observed characteristics, with a particularly important influence in this context of workplace and, specially, occupational segregation. Hipólito Simón, Esteban Sanromá and Raúl Ramos wish to thank the support received from the Ministerio de Fomento and the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia through the projects T 75/2006 (Plan Nacional de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación Científica), SEJ2004-05860/ECON and SEJ2005-04348/ECON, respectively. A previous version of this paper was published as an IVIE Working Paper (WP-EC 2007-03).     

The unemployment experience of male immigrants in England

In this paper the unemployment experience of immigrant men in the English labour market is examined, using 1993–1994 data from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey of the United Kingdom. Hypotheses proposed by Chiswick (1982) are investigated, for both the claimant count and the ILO measures of unemployment, using logistic regression analysis. Our results show that recent white and nonwhite immigrant men experience much higher levels of unemployment than earlier cohorts. For whites, this effect is transitory, whereas for nonwhites unemployment rates adjust more slowly as the duration of stay increases. Immigrant unemployment rates also vary considerably with country of birth.     

UNAUTHORIZED IMMIGRANTS' ACCESS TO DRIVER'S LICENSES AND AUTO INSURANCE COVERAGE

Fourteen states and the District of Columbia allow unauthorized immigrants to obtain driver's licenses. Using variation in the timing and location of these policy changes, we show these Unauthorized Immigrant License Polices (UILPs) are associated with a 1% increase in both the number of licensed drivers and liability insurance coverage, although we do not document a statistically significant relationship with auto insurance claims. Nor do we detect a significant relationship between UILPs and the number of miles driven, vehicle registrations, air quality, or travel behaviors. Overall, our results are consistent with UILPs licensing unauthorized immigrants who were already driving. (JEL R48, G22, K37)     

THE POVERTY REDUCTION SUCCESS OF PUBLIC TRANSFERS FOR WORKING AGE IMMIGRANTS AND REFUGEES IN THE UNITED STATES

Although there has been some research on the impacts of federal tax and transfer policies on poverty rates for immigrants, virtually no previous work investigates the most disadvantaged group of immigrants: refugees. We estimate probit models for three standard measures of poverty. We find that while immigrants and refugees in particular had much higher poverty rates in the early 1990s, the strong economic growth of the 1990s led to a convergence of those poverty rates by 2000. Our analysis demonstrates that the improvement was largely because of economic conditions and that welfare reform policies appear to have little differential impact on immigrants or refugees. We also find that refugees show a markedly greater response to local labor market conditions than other immigrants or native born. (JEL H3, I3, J1)     

Do immigrants delay retirement and social security claiming?

ABSTRACT

We use data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to examine how immigrants’ retirement and Social Security claiming patterns compare to those of natives. We find that immigrants retire and claim Social Security at older ages than natives, an effect that is similar across immigrant ethnic groups and more pronounced among immigrants who arrived in the U.S. after age 40. We discuss and explore possible mechanisms for these differences. Hazard models suggests that these differences arise because immigrants have lower retirement and claiming hazard rates in their early 60s. We do not find evidence of an increase in the rate at which immigrants move abroad or exit the survey, compared to U.S. natives, in their late 50s through 60s, a finding that is consistent with immigrants retiring in the U.S. rather than abroad. These results are important given the rising share of older immigrants living in the U.S., and they have implications for the impact of immigration on government finances as well as the retirement security of an important subgroup of the population.     

IMMIGRANT WAGE GROWTH IN THE UNITED STATES: THE ROLE OF OCCUPATIONAL UPGRADING

Immigrants to the United States routinely take jobs below their skill qualifications because of barriers to entering occupations. We use a structural model of immigrant job choice to quantify the benefits of potential policies to promote entry into suitable occupations. We estimate the model using longitudinal labor market data on immigrants to the United States. Our counterfactual results show that eliminating barriers to occupational entry would lead to only a small earnings increase for the average immigrant in our sample, but a substantial earnings increase for the most highly skilled immigrants.     

Do Hispanic immigrants spend less on medical care? Implications of the Hispanic health paradox

ABSTRACT

The literature of the Hispanic heath paradox has found that in the U.S. Hispanic immigrants have better health than U.S. natives, even though they tend to have lower socioeconomic status. The main objective of the current study is to investigate whether Hispanic immigrants also use less medical care goods and services. Main contributions of the article include using a data set of older Americans from the Health and Retirement Study covering the period from 1992 to 2012 as well as using three new measures of health, rather than the more common use of morbidity or mortality. We estimate the impact of relevant factors including health, race, and immigrant status upon five different measures of healthcare usage. Even though Hispanic immigrants do have lower mean levels of most measures of healthcare usage, when controlling for other factors in our regressions we find some evidence of increased healthcare usage for Hispanic immigrants. Increased health care utilization may be one explanation for the Hispanic health paradox.     

TAXES,HEALTH INSURANCE,AND WOMEN'S SELF‐EMPLOYMENT

I examine whether the availability of health coverage through the spouse's health plan influences a married woman's decision to become self‐employed. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA86) introduced a tax subsidy for the self‐employed to purchase their own health insurance. I test whether this “natural” experiment induced more women without spousal health insurance coverage to select into self‐employment. The most conservative difference‐in‐difference estimates based on an analysis of employed women indicate that the incidence of self‐employment among single women rose by 10% in the post‐TRA86 period, while a multinomial specification based on a sample of both employed and nonemployed women suggests that the increase was about 13%. (JEL J0, J3, I1)     

A PATHWAY TO HOMEOWNERSHIP? EVIDENCE FROM THE IMMIGRATION REFORM AND CONTROL ACT OF 1986

The impact of legal status on economic outcomes has been well documented in the literature with most research focused on labor market outcomes such as wages and occupational mobility. In this paper, I utilize the exogenous variation created the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 to estimate the effect of amnesty polices on homeownership among undocumented immigrants. Using a regression discontinuity framework, the results suggest that the IRCA increased homeownership rates of eligible immigrants by around 4 percentage points relative to ineligible immigrants. Moreover, an extension to the main analysis suggests that immigrants ineligible for the IRCA adjusted their household formation by increasing the rates of coresidency. (JEL J61, R23, R31)     

ETHNIC ENCLAVES AND LABOR MARKETS: AN ANALYSIS OF IMMIGRANT OUTCOMES IN CALIFORNIA

The goal of this article is to examine how immigrant enclaves influence labor market outcomes. We examine the effect of ethnic concentrations on earnings in the state of California. Individual-level wage equations that control for several observable human capital and demographic characteristics are estimated. In addition, we introduce a measure that captures an ethnic group's proportion of the metropolitan area population. In general, we find that any potentially positive enclave effects are likely to be offset by negative labor market competition effects. In particular, most enclave effects become insignificant after controlling for metro area–specific effects . ( JEL J61, J31)     

Immigration and School Choice in Australia

This article examines the relationship between the share of immigrants in a locality and private versus public school choices of natives and immigrants in Australia. Using the 2001 Australian Census data, it finds that private school attendance among native‐born Australians is higher in localities with a higher share of immigrant populations. Immigrants’ private school attendance is lower where the share of their like‐type immigrants is higher. These effects vary with the presence of a common language and ethnic background between the natives and the immigrants. Overall, the results suggest the possibility of a ‘flight’ from unfamiliar cultures in the Australian school system.