Inbounds
Immigration and Redistribution
Alberto Alesina, Armando Miano & Stefanie Stantcheva
NBER Working Paper, June 2018
Abstract:
We design and conduct large-scale surveys and experiments in six countries to investigate how natives' perceptions of immigrants influence their preferences for redistribution. We find strikingly large biases in natives' perceptions of the number and characteristics of immigrants: in all countries, respondents greatly overestimate the total number of immigrants, think immigrants are culturally and religiously more distant from them, and are economically weaker – less educated, more unemployed, poorer, and more reliant on government transfers – than is the case. While all respondents have misperceptions, those with the largest ones are systematically the right-wing, the non-college educated, and the low-skilled working in immigration-intensive sectors. Support for redistribution is strongly correlated with the perceived composition of immigrants – their origin and economic contribution – rather than with the perceived share of immigrants per se. Given the very negative baseline views that respondents have of immigrants, simply making them think about immigration in a randomized manner makes them support less redistribution, including actual donations to charities. We also experimentally show respondents information about the true i) number, ii) origin, and iii) “hard work” of immigrants in their country. On its own, information on the “hard work” of immigrants generates more support for redistribution. However, if people are also prompted to think in detail about immigrants' characteristics, then none of these favorable information treatments manages to counteract their negative priors that generate lower support for redistribution.
Immigrants’ Economic Assimilation: Evidence from Longitudinal Earnings Records
Andrés Villarreal & Christopher Tamborini
American Sociological Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine immigrants’ earnings trajectories and measure the extent and speed with which they are able to reduce the earnings gap with natives, using a dataset that links respondents of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to their longitudinal earnings obtained from individual tax records. Our analysis addresses key debates regarding ethnoracial and cohort differences in immigrants’ earnings trajectories. First, we find a racially differentiated pattern of earnings assimilation: black and Hispanic immigrants are less able to catch up with native whites’ earnings compared to white and Asian immigrants, but they are almost able to reach earnings parity with natives of their same race and ethnicity. Second, we find no evidence of a declining “quality” of immigrant cohorts even after controlling for their ethnoracial composition and human capital. Immigrants arriving since 1994 actually experience similar or slightly higher earnings growth compared to immigrants from earlier eras. We identify a pattern of accelerated assimilation in which more educated immigrants experience much of their earnings growth during the first years after arriving.
Immigration Reform and Farm Labor Markets
Timothy Richards
American Journal of Agricultural Economics, July 2018, Pages 1050–1071
Abstract:
Farmers throughout the United States report a shortage of workers. At the same time, there are proposals to strengthen the enforcement of existing immigration laws. In this paper, we develop an equilibrium approach to examine the impact of removing undocumented workers from the California agricultural labor market, and to infer whether there is evidence of shortages using individual-worker data. We find evidence that is consistent with a persistent shortage in some sub-sectors of the California farm labor market. Further, we conduct counter-factual policy simulations over a range of possible policy alternatives, and find that removing 50% all undocumented farm workers from the state would lead to an increase in wages of over 22%.
Beyond the Border and Into the Heartland: Spatial Patterning of U.S. Immigration Detention
Margot Moinester
Demography, June 2018, Pages 1147–1193
Abstract:
The expansion of U.S. immigration enforcement from the borders into the interior of the country and the fivefold increase in immigration detentions and deportations since 1995 raise important questions about how the enforcement of immigration law is spatially patterned across American communities. Focusing on the practice of immigration detention, the present study analyzes the records of all 717,160 noncitizens detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2008 and 2009 — a period when interior enforcement was at its peak — to estimate states’ detention rates and examine geographic variation in detention outcomes, net of individual characteristics. Findings reveal substantial state heterogeneity in immigration detention rates, which range from approximately 350 detentions per 100,000 noncitizens in Connecticut to more than 6,700 detentions per 100,000 noncitizens in Wyoming. After detainment, individuals’ detention outcomes are geographically stratified, especially for detainees eligible for pretrial release. These disparities indicate the important role that geography plays in shaping individuals’ chances of experiencing immigration detention and deportation.
High-Skill Immigration, Innovation, and Creative Destruction
Gaurav Khanna & Munseob Lee
NBER Working Paper, July 2018
Abstract:
Economists have identified product entry and exit as a primary channel through which innovation impacts economic growth. In this paper, we document how high-skill immigration affects product reallocation (entry and exit) at the firm level. Using data on H-1B Labor Condition Applications (LCAs) matched to retail scanner data on products and Compustat data on firm characteristics, we find that H-1B certification is associated with higher product reallocation and revenue growth. A ten percent increase in the share of H-1B workers is associated with a two percent increase in product reallocation rates -- our measure of innovation. These results shed light on the economic consequences of innovation by high-skill immigrant to the United States.
From Chinatown to Every Town: New Patterns of Employment for Low-Skilled Chinese Immigrants in the United States
Zai Liang et al.
Social Forces, forthcoming
Abstract:
Building on the growing literature on new immigrant destinations, this paper examines new employment patterns of low-skilled Chinese immigrants in the United States. We identify an important channel of employment in new destinations for the case of Chinese low-skilled immigrants: employment agencies in New York City’s Chinatown. We carried out two surveys of employment agencies during 2010–2011. Our findings suggest that there has been a profound change in settlement patterns of low-skilled immigrants: moving away from traditional Chinatowns in major American cities toward non-gateway destinations and rural areas. These new settlement locations are characterized by a low unemployment rate and low crime rate. Contrary to predictions from ethnic economy and mainstream economic perspectives, Chinese restaurant jobs tend not to be in places with a high concentration of Chinese immigrants, but rather in places with a high proportion of non-Hispanic whites. In addition, the farther the jobs are from New York City, the higher the salary. We discuss the implications of this fundamental change for re-conceptualizing the immigrant labor market and immigrant socioeconomic mobility in American society.
Understanding Generational Differences in Early Fertility: Proximate and Social Determinants
Rachel Goldberg
Journal of Marriage and Family, forthcoming
Method: This study used Wave 1–4 data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N=8,777 women). To distinguish between the sexual onset and fertility processes, a sequential hazard framework modelled: 1) the transition to sexual activity, and 2) the transition to first birth among women who had initiated sexual activity.
Results: Foreign‐born and second‐generation young women initiated both sexual activity and childbearing later than those with U.S.‐born parents. Sequential hazard models revealed the importance of later sexual onset in explaining delayed fertility among the foreign‐born, and of family attributes for their later sexual onset. Postonset behaviors were essential to the delayed childbearing observed among the second generation.
Hidden Progress of Multilingual Students on NAEP
Michael Kieffer & Karen Thompson
Educational Researcher, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using National Assessment of Educational Progress data from 2003 to 2015, this brief describes changes in the reading and mathematics performance of multilingual students — defined as students who report a primary home language or languages other than English. Although all students’ scores improved, multilingual students’ scores improved two to three times more than monolingual students’ scores in both subjects in Grades 4 and 8. There was little evidence that these trends were explained by cohort changes in racial/ethnic, socioeconomic, or regional composition. These promising trends are obscured when researchers and policymakers focus only on scores for students currently classified as English learners.
Economic Development of Origin-countries, Life-stage at Immigration, and Length of Residence Effects on Psychological Distress
Shirin Montazer
Social Currents, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article reexamines the healthy immigrant effect in mental health — as measured by psychological distress — by incorporating the modifying roles of the level of economic development of origin-country and life-stage at arrival among a sample of immigrants to Toronto, Canada — as compared to the native-born. The analytic sample included 2,157 adults, of which 31 percent were immigrants. Multivariate results point to a healthy immigrant effect in distress, but only among immigrants from less developed origin-countries who migrated to Canada in mid-adulthood (between 25 and 34 years of age). Further, this health advantage deteriorates with increase in length of residence only among this group of migrants, in large part because of an increase in chronic stressors. Immigrants from more developed origin-countries do not experience a healthy immigrant effect, as compared to the native-born, nor an increase in distress with tenure in Canada, irrespective of the life-stage at immigration.
Ethnic Enclaves and Immigrant Outcomes: Norwegian Immigrants during the Age of Mass Migration
Katherine Eriksson
NBER Working Paper, June 2018
Abstract:
This paper examines the effect of ethnic enclaves on economic outcomes of Norwegian immigrants in 1910 and 1920, the later part of the Age of Mass Migration. Using different identification strategies, including county fixed effects and an instrumental variables strategy based on chain migration, I consistently find that Norwegians living in larger enclaves in the United States had lower occupational earnings, were more likely to be in farming occupations, and were less likely to be in white-collar occupations. Results are robust to matching method and choice of occupational score. This earnings disadvantage is partly passed on to the second generation.
The independent and interacting effects of socioeconomic status and dual‐language use on brain structure and cognition
Natalie Brito & Kimberly Noble
Developmental Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Family socioeconomic status (SES) is strongly associated with children's cognitive development, and past studies have reported socioeconomic disparities in both neurocognitive skills and brain structure across childhood. In other studies, bilingualism has been associated with cognitive advantages and differences in brain structure across the lifespan. The aim of the current study is to concurrently examine the joint and independent associations between family SES and dual‐language use with brain structure and cognitive skills during childhood. A subset of data from the Pediatric Imaging, Neurocognition and Genetics (PING) study was analyzed; propensity score matching established an equal sample (N = 562) of monolinguals and dual‐language users with similar socio‐demographic characteristics (Mage = 13.5, Range = 3–20 years). When collapsing across all ages, SES was linked to both brain structure and cognitive skills. When examining differences by age group, brain structure was significantly associated with both income and dual‐language use during adolescence, but not earlier in childhood. Additionally, in adolescence, a significant interaction between dual‐language use and SES was found, with no difference in cortical surface area (SA) between language groups of higher‐SES backgrounds but significantly increased SA for dual‐language users from lower‐SES families compared to SES‐matched monolinguals. These results suggest both independent and interacting associations between SES and dual‐language use with brain development. To our knowledge, this is the first study to concurrently examine dual‐language use and socioeconomic differences in brain structure during childhood and adolescence.
Return Migrants' Self-selection: Evidence for Indian Inventor
Stefano Breschi, Francesco Lissoni & Ernest Miguelez
NBER Working Paper, July 2018
Abstract:
Based on an original dataset linking patent data and biographical information for a large sample of US immigrant inventors with Indian names and surnames, specialized in ICT technologies, we investigate the rate and determinants of return migration. For each individual in the dataset, we both estimate the year of entry in the United States, the likely entry channel (work or education), and the permanence spell up to either the return to India or right truncation. By means of survival analysis, we then provide exploratory estimates of the probability of return migration as a function of the conditions at migration (age, education, patenting record, migration motives, and migration cohort) as well as of some activities undertaken while abroad (education and patenting). We find both evidence of negative self-selection with respect to educational achievements in the US and of positive self-selection with respect to patenting propensity. Based on the analysis of time-dependence of the return hazard ratios, return work migrants appear to be negatively self-selected with respect to unobservable skills acquired abroad, while evidence for education migrants is less conclusive.
Dual-Language Immersion Education at Scale: An Analysis of Program Costs, Mechanisms, and Moderators
Jennifer Steele et al.
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using input and outcome data from a randomized study of dual-language immersion programs in an urban district, we examine the mediating relationships of dosage, expenditures, and classroom characteristics to students’ academic performance, and the moderating role of students’ race/ethnicity. Differential costs of immersion were concentrated at the district level and were modest, at about 2% to 4% of per-pupil spending annually. We estimate that an additional US$100 spent per immersion student in a given year was associated with an additional 8% of a standard deviation in language arts performance in English, which was just over one third of the causal point-in-time enrollment effect of 22% of a standard deviation. We find no generalizable evidence of differential effects by race/ethnicity.