America's got talent
Michael Clemens
American Economic Review, May 2013, Pages 198-202
Abstract:
Why do workers earn so much more in the United States than in India? This study compares the earnings of workers in the two countries in a unique setting. The product is perfectly tradable (software), technology differences are nil (they are members of the same work team), and the workers are identical in expectation (those who enter the United States are chosen by natural randomization). The results suggest that output tradability, technology, and human capital together explain much less than half of the earnings gap. Location itself may have large effects on individual workers' wages and productivity, for reasons poorly understood.
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Self-Selection and International Migration: New Evidence from Mexico
Robert Kaestner & Ofer Malamud
Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines the selection of Mexican migrants to the United States using novel data with rich pre-migration characteristics that include permanent migrants, return migrants, and migrating households. Results indicate that Mexican migrants are more likely to be young, male and from rural areas compared to non-migrants, but similar to non-migrants in cognitive ability and health. Migrants are selected from the middle of the education distribution. Male Mexican migrants are negatively selected on earnings, and this result is largely explained by differential returns to labor market skill between the U.S. and Mexico rather than proxies for differential costs of migration.
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Together in Good Times and Bad? How Economic Triggers Condition the Effects of Intergroup Threat
Alexandra Filindra & Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz
Social Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Objectives: Research has suggested that geosocial exposure to out-groups is associated with heightened threat perceptions on the part of the dominant white majority. However, findings are not consistent.
Methods: Drawing on realistic group conflict theory and research in political science that privileges the role of the economic context, we test if the effects of geosocial exposure are conditioned on individual expectations about the health of the macroeconomy using a unique data set from the New England states.
Results: We show that a perceived increase in the presence of immigrants in the community positively correlates with restrictionist immigration policy preferences (in this case support for Arizona's anti-immigration law), but only when people are pessimistic about the future of the state's economy.
Conclusion: The information provided by the social context becomes relevant for people's policy preference formation only when they experience or expect material loss.
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How Do Tougher Immigration Measures Affect Unauthorized Immigrants?
Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes, Thitima Puttitanun & Ana Martinez-Donate
Demography, June 2013, Pages 1067-1091
Abstract:
The recent impetus of tougher immigration-related measures passed at the state level raises concerns about the impact of such measures on the migration experience, trajectory, and future plans of unauthorized immigrants. In a recent and unique survey of Mexican unauthorized immigrants interviewed upon their voluntary return or deportation to Mexico, almost a third reported experiencing difficulties in obtaining social or government services, finding legal assistance, or obtaining health care services. Additionally, half of these unauthorized immigrants reported fearing deportation. When we assess how the enactment of punitive measures against unauthorized immigrants, such as E-Verify mandates, has affected their migration experience, we find no evidence of a statistically significant association between these measures and the difficulties reported by unauthorized immigrants in accessing a variety of services. However, the enactment of these mandates infuses deportation fear, reduces interstate mobility among voluntary returnees during their last migration spell, and helps curb deportees' intent to return to the United States in the near future.
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Pathways to Adjustment: The Case of Information Technology Workers
John Bound et al.
American Economic Review, May 2013, Pages 203-207
Abstract:
One long-standing hypothesis about science and engineering labor markets is that the supply of highly skilled workers is likely to be inelastic in the short run. We consider the market for computer scientists and electrical engineers (IT workers) and the evolution of wages and employment through two periods of increased demand. Relative to the boom of the 1970s, the demand shock in the 1990s generated relatively greater changes in employment and smaller changes in wages. The growth in the pool of skilled workers abroad, combined with increased immigration in high-skill fields, is central to this story.
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Non-native speakers of English in the classroom: What are the effects on pupil performance?
Charlotte Geay, Sandra McNally & Shqiponja Telhaj
Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
There has been an increase in the number of children going to school in England who do not speak English as a first language. We investigate whether this has an impact on the educational outcomes of native English speakers at the end of primary school. We show that the negative correlation observed in the raw data is mainly an artefact of selection: non-native speakers are more likely to attend school with disadvantaged native speakers. We attempt to identify a causal impact of changes in the percentage of non-native speakers. Our results suggest zero effect and rule out negative effects.
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Integration as a catalyst for assimilation
Oded Stark & Marcin Jakubeke
International Review of Economics & Finance, forthcoming
Abstract:
We draw a distinction between the social integration and economic assimilation of migrants, and study an interaction between the two. We define social integration as blending into the host country's society, and economic assimilation as acquisition of human capital that is specific to the host country's labor market. We show that a non-integrated migrant finds it optimal to acquire a relatively limited quantity of human capital; with fellow migrants constituting his only comparison group, a non-integrated migrant does not have a relative-deprivation-based incentive to close the income gap with the natives. However, when a migrant is made to integrate, his social proximity to the natives exposes him to relative deprivation, which in turn prompts him to form more destination-specific human capital in order to increase his earnings and narrow the income gap with the natives. In this way, social integration becomes a catalyst for economic assimilation.
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Legal Status and Educational Transitions for Mexican and Central American Immigrant Youth
Emily Greenman & Matthew Hall
Social Forces, June 2013, Pages 1475-1498
Abstract:
This study uses the Survey of Income and Program Participation to infer the legal status of Mexican and Central American immigrant youth and to investigate its relationship with educational attainment. We assess differences by legal status in high school graduation and college enrollment, decompose differences in college enrollment into the probability of high school graduation and the probability of high school graduates' enrollment in college and estimate the contributions of personal and family background characteristics to such differences. Results show that undocumented students are less likely than documented students to both graduate from high school and enroll in college, and differences in college enrollment cannot be explained by family background characteristics. We conclude that legal status is a critical axis of stratification for Latinos.
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Achieving the DREAM: The Effect of IRCA on Immigrant Youth Postsecondary Educational Access
Kalena Cortes
American Economic Review, May 2013, Pages 428-432
Abstract:
This paper contributes to the existing literature on the effect of legal status on educational access among immigrant youth in the United States. The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 granted amnesty to undocumented immigrants who entered the United States before 1982. Using a difference-in-differences framework, I analyze the effect of this large amnesty program on immigrant youth's postsecondary educational access. My main finding shows that immigrant youths who were granted amnesty under IRCA are more likely to enroll in postsecondary education.
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Does the Clustering of Immigrant Peers Affect the School Performance of Natives?
Inés Hardoy & Pål Schøne
Journal of Human Capital, Spring 2013, Pages 1-25
Abstract:
We analyze whether the proportion of immigrant students affects the school performance of natives in secondary school, measured by dropout. To derive causal statements, we construct a time-varying school quality indicator exploiting potential random variation in the number of immigrants within the same school. The results reveal a positive and significant relationship between the proportion of immigrants and the dropout rate of natives. It is only with larger proportions of immigrants that we find significant peer effects. Regarding the mechanisms of influence, our results point to the importance of peer quality.
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How immigrant children affect the academic achievement of native Dutch children
Asako Ohinata & Jan van Ours
Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this paper, we analyse how the share of immigrant children in the classroom affects the educational attainment of native Dutch children. Our analysis uses data from various sources, which allow us to characterize educational attainment in terms of reading literacy, mathematical skills and science skills. Our results suggests that Dutch students face a worse learning environment when they are studying with more immigrant students in the classroom. However, we do not find strong evidence of negative spill-over effects from the presence of immigrant children on the academic performance of the native Dutch students.
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International Migration, Sex Ratios, and the Socioeconomic Outcomes of Nonmigrant Mexican Women
Steven Raphael
Demography, June 2013, Pages 971-991
Abstract:
This article assesses whether international migration from Mexico affects the marital, fertility, schooling, and employment outcomes of the Mexican women who remain behind by exploiting variation over time as well as across Mexican states in the demographic imbalance between men and women. I construct a gauge of the relative supply of men for women of different age groups based on state-level male and female population counts and the empirically observed propensity of men of specific ages to marry women of specific ages. Using Mexican census data from 1960 through 2000, I estimate a series of models in which the dependent variable is the intercensus change in an average outcome for Mexican women measured by state and for specific age groups, and the key explanatory variable is the change in the relative supply of men to women in that state/age group. I find that the declining relative supply of males positively and significantly affects the proportion of women who have never been married as well as the proportion of women who have never had a child. In addition, states experiencing the largest declines in the relative supply of men also experience relatively large increases in female educational attainment and female employment rates. However, I find little evidence that women who do marry match to men who are younger or less educated than themselves.
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Immigrant-native wage gaps in time series: Complementarities or composition effects?
Joakim Ruist
Economics Letters, May 2013, Pages 154-156
Abstract:
Previous research has shown that immigrants' wages decrease when the supply of immigrants increases. This negative correlation has been interpreted as evidence of immigrant-native complementarities in production. The present study finds that it is instead due to changing immigrant composition.
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The Scale and Selectivity of Foreign-Born PhD Recipients in the US
Jeffrey Grogger & Gordon Hanson
American Economic Review, May 2013, Pages 189-192
Abstract:
We study the scale and selectivity of foreign-born PhD students in science and engineering. We focus on students from China, India, Korea, and Taiwan, which together account for most roughly one-third of science and engineering PhD students in the United States. The selectivity of these students is high, as measured by their fathers' relative education levels. In China and India, fathers of students who receive US PhDs in these fields are roughly 15 times more likely to have a BA degree than their contemporaries are to have tertiary education. Over time, selectivity falls for China but the trend for other countries is ambiguous.
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Serge Guimond et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
In contrast to authors of previous single-nation studies, we propose that supporting multiculturalism (MC) or assimilation (AS) is likely to have different effects in different countries, depending on the diversity policy in place in a particular country and the associated norms. A causal model of intergroup attitudes and behaviors, integrating both country-specific factors (attitudes and perceived norms related to a particular diversity policy) and general social-psychological determinants (social dominance orientation), was tested among participants from countries where the pro-diversity policy was independently classified as low, medium, or high (N = 1,232). Results showed that (a) anti-Muslim prejudice was significantly reduced when the pro-diversity policy was high; (b) countries differed strongly in perceived norms related to MC and AS, in ways consistent with the actual diversity policy in each country and regardless of participants' personal attitudes toward MC and AS; (c) as predicted, when these norms were salient, due to subtle priming, structural equation modeling with country included as a variable provided support for the proposed model, suggesting that the effect of country on prejudice can be successfully accounted by it; and (d) consistent with the claim that personal support for MC and AS played a different role in different countries, within-country mediation analyses provided evidence that personal attitudes toward AS mediated the effect of social dominance orientation on prejudice when pro-diversity policy was low, whereas personal attitudes toward MC was the mediator when pro-diversity policy was high. Thus, the critical variables shaping prejudice can vary across nations.
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Juan Manuel Falomir-Pichastor et al.
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Two studies examined the influence of an anti-discrimination norm on Swiss nationals' discrimination against foreigners as a function of initial attitude (pro-foreigner vs. anti-foreigner) and in-group threat (i.e., whether or not foreigners are perceived as taking nationals' jobs). Results showed that anti-foreigners decreased their level of discrimination (i.e., a conformity effect) when threat was low, but did not change (Study 1) or increased discrimination (i.e., a counter-conformity effect) when threat was high (Study 2). No significant effects were observed for pro-foreigners. It is argued that conformity to anti-discrimination norms increases as the individual-norm discrepancy increases, insofar as the social context provides legitimacy to this norm (i.e., low in-group threat conditions).
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Arjumand Siddiqi et al.
Journal of Public Health Policy, May 2013, Pages 330-344
Background: We compare disparities in health status between first-generation immigrants and others in the United States (US) and Canada.
Methods: We used data from the Joint Canada-US Survey of Health. The regression models adjusted for demographics, socioeconomic status, and health insurance (the US).
Results: In both countries, the health advantage belonged to immigrants. Fewer disparities between immigrants and those native-born were seen in Canada versus the US. Canadians of every immigrant/race group fared better than US native-born Whites.
Discussion: Fewer disparities in Canada and better overall health of all Canadians suggest that societal context may create differences in access to the resources, environments, and experiences that shape health and health behaviors.