Stirring the Melting Pot
Immigrant Entrepreneurship: The Effect of Early Career Immigration Constraints on New Venture Formation|
Rajshree Agarwal, Martin Ganco & Joseph Raffiee
Organization Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine how institutional factors may affect microlevel career decisions by individuals to create new firms by impacting their ability to exercise entrepreneurial preferences, their accumulation of human capital, and the opportunity costs associated with new venture formation. We focus on an important institutional factor — immigration-related work constraints — given that technologically intensive firms in the United States not only draw upon immigrants as knowledge workers but also because such firms are disproportionately founded by immigrants. We examine the implications of these constraints using the National Science Foundation’s Scientists and Engineers Statistical Data System, which tracks the careers of science and engineering graduates from U.S. universities. Relative to natives, we theorize and show that immigration-related work constraints in the United States suppress entrepreneurship as an early career choice of immigrants by restricting labor market options to paid employment jobs in organizational contexts tightly matched with the immigrant’s educational training (job-education match). Work experience in paid employment job-education match is associated with the accumulation of specialized human capital and increased opportunity costs associated with new venture formation. Consistent with immigration-related work constraints inhibiting individuals with entrepreneurial preferences from engaging in entrepreneurship, we show that when the immigration-related work constraints are released, immigrants in job-education match are more likely than comparable natives to found incorporated employer firms. Incorporated employer firms can both leverage specialized human capital and provide the expected returns needed to justify the increased opportunity costs associated with entrepreneurial entry. We discuss our study’s contributions to theory and practice.
Undocumented donors: How driver’s licenses can help solve the U.S. organ shortage
William Alexander Henry Schwartz & Luvia Quiñones
Journal of Public Health Policy, December 2021, Pages 550–558
Abstract:
In 2013, Illinois enacted a new law (SB 957) to allow undocumented motorists to acquire Temporary Visitor Driver’s Licenses (TVDLs). We explored the impact of this legislation on organ donor registration in the state. Using Freedom of Information Act requests, we obtained the Illinois TVDL and general adult driver’s license applicant organ donation statistics for the last 3 years from the Illinois Secretary of State. We found that between 2017 and 2019, TVDLs directly resulted in 91,720 newly registered organ donors. This group registered as organ donors at rates significantly higher (p < 0.0001) than the general population. In the 3 years studied, only 7.3% of general driver’s license registrants became new organ donor registrants, while TVDL drivers signed up at an average rate of 44.9%. TVDLs resulted in a significant increase in registered organ donors. Similar policies implemented nationwide could increase donor registrations substantially. In addition, this finding among a population largely of Latin American origin may suggest strategies for future organ donor registration efforts globally.
The Relationship between Early-Life Conditions in the Home Country and Adult Outcomes among Child Immigrants in the United States
Deniz Gevrek, Cahit Guven & Eylem Gevrek
Economics & Human Biology, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine the impact of health and economic conditions at birth on the adult outcomes of child immigrants using the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study. Our sample consists of children from 39 countries who were brought to the United States before the age of 13. We estimate immigrant outcomes as a function of the infant mortality rate (IMR) and GDP per capita of their home country in the year of birth, controlling for birth-year, year-of-arrival and country-of-birth fixed effects, as well as demographic characteristics. IMR has a significant negative impact on English reading ability and GPA in middle school. IMR significantly decreases first job prestige, years of schooling, working hours and log earnings. Some of these effects appear to be working through the lower middle school GPA. IMR does not influence self-rated health or labour market participation in adulthood, and there is no statistically significant relationship between GDP per capita and adult outcomes. Detrimental effects of IMR are significantly lower for children who arrived younger and whose parents have high school degree or above. Our estimates are of economic significance: the impact of being born in 1975 versus 1976 in Nicaragua in terms of the impact of IMR on earnings is equal to the gender effect on earnings. Our results cannot be explained by selection on observables: the pre-migration characteristics of children and parents are not associated significantly with the health and economic conditions at birth. Also, several tests show that our results cannot be explained by potential selection on unobservables.
Sanctioning the Homeland: Diasporas’ Influence on American Economic Sanctions Policy
Tyler Kustra
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
Why do some immigrant groups succeed in influencing the U.S. government to impose economic sanctions on their former dictators, while others do not? This paper begins by noting that the president is the pivotal player in sanctions policy and that presidents cater to voters in swing states. Therefore, a diaspora’s proportion of the swing-state electorate should determine whether the American government imposes sanctions on their former homeland. Considering dictatorships from 1946 to 2005, this paper finds that a one-percentage-point increase in the diaspora’s proportion of the swing-state electorate increases the probability of regime-change sanctions by 11 percentage points. It then calculates causal estimates of the effectiveness of these sanctions on regime change. Using the diaspora’s proportion of the swing-state electorate as an instrumental variable for the presence of economic sanctions, it finds that sanctions do not have a positive, statistically-significant impact on regime change while a negative impact is plausible.
Who Goes on Disability When Times Are Tough? The Role of Work Norms Among Immigrants
Delia Furtado, Kerry Papps & Nikolaos Theodoropoulos
European Economic Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
We consider how work norms affect the likelihood of people receiving Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) in response to worsening economic conditions. By focusing on immigrants in the US, we can examine the influence of work norms in a person's home country, which we argue are exogenous to labor market prospects in the US. We find that the probability of receiving SSDI benefits is more sensitive to economic downturns among immigrants from countries where people place less importance on work. We also provide evidence that this result is not driven by differential labor market sensitivities to the business cycle or differences in other characteristics that might be correlated with norms.
Immigrant Labor and the Institutionalization of the U.S.-born Elderly
Kristin Butcher, Kelsey Moran & Tara Watson
NBER Working Paper, November 2021
Abstract:
The U.S. population is aging. We examine whether immigration causally affects the likelihood that the U.S.-born elderly live in institutional settings. Using a shift-share instrument to identify exogenous variation in immigration, we find that a 10 percentage point increase in the less-educated foreign-born labor force share in a local area reduces institutionalization among the elderly by 1.5 and 3.8 percentage points for those aged 65+ and 80+, a 26-29 percent effect relative to the mean. The estimates imply that a typical U.S-born individual over age 65 in the year 2000 was 0.5 percentage points (10 percent) less likely to be living in an institution than would have been the case if immigration had remained at 1980 levels. We show that immigration affects the availability and cost of home services, including those provided by home health aides, gardeners and housekeepers, and other less-educated workers, reducing the cost of aging in the community.
Out of the Class and Into the Shadows: Immigration Enforcement and Education Among U.S.-Citizen and Foreign-Born Hispanics
Jose Bucheli, Joaquín Alfredo-Angel Rubalcaba & Edward Vargas
AERA Open, November 2021
Abstract:
With the recent escalation in interior immigration enforcement across the United States, immigrant and U.S.-born children are increasingly exposed to coercive measures that have been shown to disrupt their development. This study examines the relationship between immigration-related arrests and the educational outcomes of Hispanics — a group that is overwhelmingly targeted by immigration authorities. Using data on the number of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests at the Metropolitan Statistical Area level, we estimate the impact of immigration enforcement on Hispanics’ school enrollment. We find that increases in the arrest rate are accompanied by substantial declines in enrollment among Hispanic youth, including U.S.-born, foreign-born, and individuals in mixed-status families. Additionally, we do not find evidence of this relationship among other racial/ethnic groups, suggesting that the impact is concentrated among Hispanic individuals. Our results advance our understanding of the unintended consequences of immigration enforcement on educational outcomes and show that ethnicity is a crucial factor in this process.
Messaging “en Español”: The Impact of Spanish Language on Linked Fate Among Bilingual Latinos
Barbara Gomez-Aguinaga
International Journal of Press/Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
While the number of U.S. residents who speak non-English languages at home is on the rise, little is known about the sociopolitical implications of exposure to minority languages among multilingual speakers in the United States. This study analyzes whether exposure to Spanish, a U.S. minority language, impacts perceptions of linked fate among bilingual Latinos, and if so, whether the consumption of ethnic media amplifies this effect. Through a population-based survey experiment among bilingual Latinos, this study finds that Latinos who are exposed to content in Spanish are more likely to report in-group linked fate than their counterparts exposed to the same message in English. Moreover, these effects are stronger among consumers of Spanish-language news. This study contributes to our understanding of the role of minority languages and ethnic media on pan-ethnic identities and highlights the importance of the growing linguistic diversity in the United States.
Does refugee inflow affect urban crime? Evidence from the U.S. Indochinese refugee resettlement
Seung-hun Chung & Jung Bae
Southern Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study the city-level crime effects of immigration using a large migratory episode in U.S. cities: the resettlement of postwar Indochinese refugees in the 1970s–1980s. We examine the impact of these migratory inflows, where the destination of refugees was largely exogeneously determined, on the incidence of various types of crime by aggregating county-level crime data. Results from a difference-in-differences analysis imply that the cities receiving the heaviest inflows of refugees did not experience differential trends in property crime or violent crime rates following this period; while there is an upward impact on murder rates, pre-trends do not match for this variable, and further analysis via the synthetic control method show that any upward impact is driven primarily by a temporary (5 years at most) surge in three metropolitan statistical areas. Our results suggest that consistent with prior literature, even a large refugee inflow may not by itself generate persistent crime increases.
Immigration and Occupational Comparative Advantage
Gordon Hanson & Chen Liu
NBER Working Paper, October 2021
Abstract:
Job choice by high-skilled foreign-born workers in the US correlates strongly with country of origin. We apply a Fréchet-Roy model of occupational choice to evaluate the causes of immigrant sorting. In a gravity specification, we find that revealed comparative advantage in the US is stronger for workers from countries with higher education quality in occupations that are more intensive in cognitive reasoning, and for workers from countries that are more linguistically similar to the US in occupations that are more intensive in communication. Our findings hold for immigrants who arrived in the US at age 18 or older (who received their K-12 education abroad) but not for immigrants who arrived in the US as children (who received their K-12 education domestically). We obtain similar results for immigrant sorting in Canada, which supports our interpretation that origin-country education quality, rather than US immigration policy, is what drives sorting patterns. In counterfactual analysis, we evaluate the consequences of reallocating visas for college-educated immigrants according to origin-country education quality.
Diversifying neighborhoods and schools engender perceptions of foreign cultural threat among White Americans
Linda Zou & Sapna Cheryan
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
A nationally representative survey (N = 2,213) and five experiments (four preregistered, total N = 1,920) revealed that Whites perceived a foreign cultural threat, or a threat to their American culture and way of life, from the projected growth of racial and ethnic minority populations in their majority-White neighborhoods (Studies 1–5) and schools (Study 6). Whites perceived the increasing presence of Arab Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans to pose an especially strong degree of perceived foreign cultural threat relative to Black Americans, who were perceived as more threatening than no demographic change. Furthermore, perceptions of foreign cultural threat predicted Whites’ desires to move out above and beyond other established intergroup threats (e.g., realistic and symbolic threats). These findings highlight how Whites’ concerns about losing their American culture and way of life as racial and ethnic minority groups enter majority-White neighborhoods and schools may contribute to the maintenance of racial segregation.
Agenda Setting by News and by the Audience in a News Portal Panel Experiment
Martina Santia et al.
Mass Communication and Society, forthcoming
Abstract:
News can powerfully influence audience issue priorities, but the classic experiments on agenda setting occurred decades ago, prior to major changes in media. This calls not only for updated replication, but also for implementing advancements already made in recent non-experimental agenda-setting scholarship. Particularly, the new wave of agenda-setting experimentation should question the original assumptions that news is unique in its agenda-setting power, that issues are independent, and that effects are uniform across party lines. A 12-day experiment embedded in a purpose-built online news portal tested effects of the news agenda and the “user agenda.” Participants were randomly assigned to encounter more or fewer real, timely stories about three topics (the news agenda) and altered rankings of stories about two other topics in a trending or recommended sidebar (the user agenda). Both agendas had significant effects regardless of partisanship. Contrary to the issue independence assumption but consistent with group threat theory, a user agenda emphasizing anti-Black racism increased immigration importance, particularly among Republicans.