|
on Economics of Human Migration |
| By: | VU, Manh Tien |
| Abstract: | We examine whether Vietnamese migrant workers induce different gender roles in housework division among their left-behind household members. Using two waves of Vietnamese Household Living Standard Surveys (2006-2008), we apply the first-difference method and deploy a simple household fixed effects model with instrumental variables for robustness check. We find temporary female migrants are associated with a higher probability of undertaking housework by left-behind male members and there is a reduction in the gender gap of time spent on chores. However, we find little evidence for a similar reduction in the gender gap where household size is altered for other reasons. |
| Keywords: | Gender, Housework, Housework division, Migration, Vietnam, J16, D13, O15 |
| Date: | 2018–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:agi:wpaper:00000148&r=mig |
| By: | Lin, Carl; Sun, Yan; Xing, Chunbing |
| Abstract: | We use several datasets to study whether son preference prevails in the human capital investment among Chinese rural-urban migrant households. We find that son preference exists among the rural migrants’ households and that it caused lower probabilities relative to that of their boy counterparts that school age girls will migrate with their parents—a difference that is absent for children of preschool age. We also find that (1) boys are more likely to migrate following the reduction in the number of rural primary schools, (2) migrant households with multiple children tend to take their sons to migrate more than they take their daughters, and (3) the fact that parents of boy students spend more on their children’s education can be largely explained by the extra costs of schooling for migrant households. Finally, we show that the parents of rural children have higher expectations for boys than they do for girls. Our results suggest that son preference is detrimental to the human capital investment in girls in contemporary China when institutional arrangements result in high costs of schooling for migrants. |
| Keywords: | Rural-urban migration,China,Children,Son preference,Human capital |
| JEL: | J13 J16 J61 J24 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:268&r=mig |
| By: | Duleep, Harriet Orcutt; Regets, Mark |
| Abstract: | Recently proposed immigration reforms would constitute a major break in the 40-year-old U.S. admissions policy favoring family members. Although emphasizing the importance of the nuclear family, the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform and a house subcommittee on immigration recommend eliminating immigration preferences to other close relatives, including the brothers, sisters, and adult children of U.S. citizens. Under the proposed system, those relatives could not obtain U.S. visas unless they qualified because of specific job skills. Using Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) data on admissions criteria matched to 1990 Census data, we examine the effect of family admissions on immigrant education, self-employment, and earnings. Of particular relevance to the current debate, we also examine the effect of one of the family-based admission categories recommended for elimination -- the preference category that admits the siblings of U.S. citizens. We find that family-based immigrants, in general, have low initial earnings but high earnings growth relative to immigrants admitted on the basis of occupational skills. The earnings growth of immigrants is particularly high in cohorts with relatively high sibling admissions. Furthermore, sibling admissions are positively associated with immigrant self-employment. We also find that immigrant education levels are positively associated with sibling admissions and that the flows of occupation-based immigrants and immigrants admitted under the sibling category are intimately connected, particularly for immigrants from regions of the world where economic opportunities are limited for highly educated individuals. The results on earnings growth, self-employment, and education suggest that eliminating the sibling category may be counterproductive. More generally, the paper adds to our basic knowledge about the complex interactions of admission categories, human capital investment, and earnings growth. |
| Keywords: | immigrant economic assimilation,human capital investment,country of origin,immigrant earnings convergence,immigration law |
| JEL: | J15 J24 J61 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:271&r=mig |
| By: | Chen, Yi; Fan, Ziying; Gu, Xiaomin; Zhou, Li-An |
| Abstract: | This paper studies human-capital spillovers and its persistence by exploiting a unique event in modern China|the send-down movement. From 1962 to 1979, the Chinese central government mandated the temporary resettlement of roughly 18 million urban youths to rural areas across the country. The movement's coercive features, together with strict restrictions on migration during that period, provide an ideal natural experiment to identify the causal impact of the better-educated sent-down youths (SDYs) on the less-educated local rural residents. Using a county-level dataset compiled from over 3,000 book-length local gazetteers and microlevel population censuses, we find that a greater exposure to SDYs significantly increased local residents' educational achievement. Our estimate shows that the unintended gain of rural education almost compensated the loss in urban China due to the educational disruption during the Cultural Revolution. The positive effect gradually declined as SDYs started to return to their urban homes in the late 1970s, but it never dropped to zero, indicating the persistence of human-capital spillovers. We also find suggestive evidence that the arrival of young talents reshapes the attitudes of local residents toward education. |
| Keywords: | Send-down Movement,Rural Education,Human-capital Spillovers |
| JEL: | I25 J24 N35 O15 R23 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:272&r=mig |
| By: | Mullally, C. |
| Abstract: | International migration is an important source of employment and remittances for households in the developing world. In a male-dominated international migration system, females are more likely to head households after the exit of a migrant. In this study, we decompose impacts of international migration into effects attributable to a change in the gender of the household head and effects attributable to other mechanisms. We use an unbalanced panel dataset collected over fourteen years from 2000-2014 in Bangladesh, where international migrants are almost all men. Combining instrumental variable estimation with causal mediation methods, we find that sending an international migrant reduces household participation in crop farming, livestock production, and non-farm businesses at the intensive and extensive margins. However, the average impacts of changes in the gender of the household head due to migration show an opposite effect. We find similar results for input expenditure, capital stock, and time allocation in farming, livestock, and business activities as well. Results show that migration increases household expenditures in food and non-food items, but the newly formed female-headed households induced through migration spend less on food and non-food items and invest more on productive activities. Acknowledgement : We are grateful to BRAC for providing us the data set and to Mr. Mahafuzur Rahman for his support during the study. We would also like to thank Marc Bellemere, Spiro Stefanou, Pilar Useche, Hector Sandoval, Charles Moss, Dianne Cothran, and seminar participants at the AAEA Annual Meeting in Chicago and the University of Florida for their comments and suggestions. The standard caveats apply. |
| Keywords: | Consumer/Household Economics |
| Date: | 2018–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae18:276993&r=mig |
| By: | Liu, C.; Yi, F.; Xu, Z. |
| Abstract: | This study pioneers the application of the New Economics of Labor Migration theory to outline and estimate two opposite effects of labor loss driven by the migration and remittances of adult children on the health of left-behind elderly parents through the changing rural market constraints. We use China's rural household survey data and simultaneous equation econometric techniques to estimate the effects of migration on the physical and mental health of left-behind elders. Results indicate that the loss of labor to migration has a significantly negative effect on the health of left-behind elders, but remittances from migrants can compensate for the adverse effect. This study provides a comprehensive understanding that remittances from migration relax the constraints on household resource allocations in undeveloped rural areas with imperfect market conditions. Overall, left-behind elderly parents benefit from migrant children both physically and mentally. Acknowledgement : Authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support by National Science Foundation of China (Grants: 71673137), Nanjing Agricultural University (Grants: Y0201400037, SKCX2015004), Education department of Jiangsu province (Grant: 2014SJD069), Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PAPD), China Center for Food Security Studies at Nanjing Agricultural University, Jiangsu Rural Development and Land Policy Research Institute, and Jiangsu Agriculture Modernization Decision Consulting Center. All remaining errors are ours. |
| Keywords: | Health Economics and Policy |
| Date: | 2018–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae18:276975&r=mig |
| By: | Jun Nagayasu |
| Abstract: | Using household survey data from the recent economically depressed period, we attempt to identify typical household characteristics by residential type and study whether households change their residence in different stages of life. We find that the general trend in residential choice is influenced by their socioeconomic backgrounds. Multinomial probit estimation results show that the probability of homeownership is higher in rural areas and increases with the age of household heads, income, and family size. In contrast, the probability of renting a home increases in urban areas along with rising mortgage rates. Moreover, despite market imperfection, there is a significant tendency among people to adjust residential size according to their needs in different stages of life. Indeed, there is a strong tendency for dwelling size to increase with household age, but it begins to reduce once households reach the age of 55. However, because of the small scale of this reduction in the late life-cycle, we conclude that post-war housing policies were not very supportive of the elderly. |
| Date: | 2018–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:toh:dssraa:89&r=mig |
| By: | Zouhair Aït Benhamou; Lesly Cassin |
| Abstract: | This paper puts forward a modified OLG framework for high migration countries such as Caribbean islands, to link economic growth and demographic features. Our theoretical model captures the potential effects of migration on the households' choices in terms of savings, fertility and education, and thus on the accumulation of human and physical capital. Through a numerical analysis we study specifically five countries. We find that households in Jamaica, Haiti and Dominican Republic invest more in education for future generations and increase their fertility rate. Thus due to migration, their economic growth is driven by accumulation of efficient units of labor. For Barbados or Trinidad and Tobago, the benefits from education are dwarfed respectively by a low migration premium or a low level of remittances. Their economic growth is therefore driven by a high accumulation of physical capital. Second, we introduce frictions on the capital market in order to account for the imperfections in the interest rate adjustments to the marginal productivity of capital. For the studied islands, physical capital accumulation on the one hand and economic growth on the other hand show trade-offs between short-run and long-run if the frictions are reduced. |
| Keywords: | Migration, Capital Markets, Overlapping Generations Model, Caribbean, Small Island Developing States |
| JEL: | F24 J24 J11 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:drm:wpaper:2018-41&r=mig |
| By: | Tomislav Herceg (Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb); Lorena ?kufli? (Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb); Iva Vuksanovi? Herceg (Faculty of Economics, University of Belgrade) |
| Abstract: | New EU member states face both migrational and natural demographic decline, while the old member states compensate the negative net birth rate with the immigration. A poor level of development of the economy as well as the accession to EU encouraged net emigration from the new member states. A panel data for the 12 new member states for the period 2007 - 2016 was used to determine how the length of membership and the GDP per capita trailing behind the EU average affect the proportion of the net emigration. It has been shown that a country has to reach at least 85% of the GDP p.c. of the EU average (measured in PPS) to prevent these tendencies, but this level increases with each year of membership by 1,37%. Croatian current GDP p.c. level at 60% of the EU average, lagging more than 30 percentage points behind the non-emigration level, is one of the reasons for the up to that moment unseen level of the net emigration (0,90% of population in 2016). |
| Keywords: | emigration, new EU member states, old EU member states, depopulation,economic development |
| JEL: | J11 A10 J19 |
| Date: | 2018–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:ibmpro:6808512&r=mig |
| By: | Guilherme Bandeira (Banco de España); Jordi Caballé (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Barcelona GSE); Eugenia Vella (Move, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and University of Sheeld) |
| Abstract: | High unemployment and fiscal austerity during the Great Recession have led to significant migration outflows in those European countries that suffered a deep deterioration of their economy, Greece being the most obvious case. This paper introduces endogenous migration in a small open economy DSGE model to analyze the business cycle effects from the interaction of fiscal consolidation instruments with migration. A tax-based consolidation induces the strongest increase in emigration, leading to the highest costs in terms of aggregate GDP and unemployment in the medium run. As a result, the unemployment gains from migration are only temporary. However, in terms of per capita GDP, cuts in the components of public spending that are either productive or utility-enhancing can lead to a deeper contraction than tax hikes or wasteful spending cuts. The introduction of potential migration by the employed implies even higher unemployment costs, a deeper demand contraction, and an increase in both the tax hike and the time required to achieve the same size of fiscal consolidation. |
| Keywords: | fiscal consolidation, migration, matching frictions, on-the-job search |
| JEL: | E32 F41 |
| Date: | 2018–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bde:wpaper:1839&r=mig |
| By: | Marie Albertine Djuikom; Guy Lacroix |
| Abstract: | Immigrants often experience diÿculties integrating the local labor market. In Canada, the govern-ment of Quebec implemented a program back in 1996 that explicitly selected highly qualified workers (Bachelors’, Masters’ or PhD’s). This paper investigates the extent to which the return to foreign-acquired human capital is di˙erent from the education acquired in Quebec. Specifically, we seek to estimate the benefits of post-migration education over foreign-education on the transitions between qualified and un-qualified jobs and unemployment by means of a multiple-spells and multiple-states model. Our results indicate that immigrants originating from well-o˙ countries have no need to further invest in domestic education. On the other hand, immigrants from poorer countries, despite being highly qualified, benefit greatly from such training in the long run as it eases their transitions into qualified and unqualified jobs and out of unemployment. Our results also indicate that selection into domestic education needs to be accounted for to avoid significant selection problems. |
| Keywords: | Post-migration Schooling,Foreign Education,Labour Market Histories,Multiple-spells Multiple-states Models, |
| JEL: | C31 C41 J15 J24 J64 J61 |
| Date: | 2018–04–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cir:cirwor:2018s-09&r=mig |
| By: | Gaetano Basso (Bank of Italy); Francesco D'Amuri (Bank of Italy); Giovanni Peri (Univeristy of California, Davis) |
| Abstract: | We analyze the role of labor mobility in cushioning labor demand shocks in the Euro Area. We find that foreign-born workers’ mobility is strongly cyclical, while this is not the case for natives. Foreigners’ higher population to employment elasticity reduces the variation in overall employment rates over the business cycle: thanks to foreigners, the impact of a one standard deviation change in employment on employment rates decreases by 6 per cent at country level and by 7 per cent at regional level. In addition, we compare Euro Area mobility with that of another currency union, the US. We find that the population to employment elasticity estimated for foreign-born persons is similar in the Euro Area and the US, while Euro Area natives are definitely less mobile across countries than US natives are across states in response to labor demand shocks. This latter result confirms that in the Euro Area there is room for improving country-specific shock absorption through higher labor mobility. It also suggests that immigration has helped labor market adjustments. |
| Keywords: | business cycles, international migration, mobility |
| JEL: | E32 F22 J6 |
| Date: | 2018–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdi:wptemi:td_1195_18&r=mig |
| By: | Lozej, Matija (Central Bank of Ireland) |
| Abstract: | With the freemovement of labour in Europe, economic migration has become an important determinant of labour supply. Cyclical migration exceeds one percent of the population in many countries and affects (un)employment and wage setting. The main contribution of this paper is that it models migration as an endogenous decision in a search-and-matching framework, where labour market institutions play an important role. It shows that, contrary to typical beliefs, migration can amplify business cycles. After a positive shock to the economy, immigration increases the labour force and initially unemployment. The latter reduces a worker’s outside option in wage negotiations, resulting in a lower wage increase than when there is no migration. With cheaper labour firms post more job vacancies, which increases the probability that unemployed workers find jobs and attracts new workers to immigrate. Attenuated response of wages and the stronger response of employment to shocks result in a flatter Phillips curve. . . . |
| Keywords: | Migration; Search and Matching; Unemployment; Labour force; Business cycles. |
| JEL: | E23 E32 J21 J61 J64 |
| Date: | 2018–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cbi:wpaper:8/rt/18&r=mig |
| By: | Guy Abel (School of Sociology and Political Science, Shanghai University); Michael Brottrager (Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University); Jesus Crespo Cuaresma (Department of Economics, Vienna University of Economics and Business); Raya Muttarak (School of International Development, University of East Anglia) |
| Abstract: | Despite the lack of robust empirical evidence, a growing number of media reports attempt to link climate change to the ongoing violent conflicts in Syria and other parts of the world, as well as to the migration crisis in Europe. Exploiting bilateral data on asylum seeking applications for 157 countries over the period 2006-2015, we assess the determinants of refugee flows using a gravity model which accounts for endogenous selection in order to examine the causal link between climate, conflict and forced migration. Our results indicate that climatic conditions, by affecting drought severity and the likelihood of armed conflict, played a significant role as an explanatory factor for asylum seeking in the period 2011-2015. The effect of climate on conflict occurrence is particularly relevant for countries in Western Asia in the period 2010-2012 during when many countries were undergoing political transformation. This finding suggests that the impact of climate on conflict and asylum seeking flows is limited to specific time period and contexts. |
| Keywords: | forced migration, climate change, conflict |
| JEL: | F22 Q54 D74 |
| Date: | 2018–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwwuw:wuwp272&r=mig |
| By: | Vahan Sargsyan |
| Abstract: | In this paper, I focus on the relationships between the attitude of the native population towards immigrants and immigration (ATII) in 20 European countries and the level of social integration and perceived discrimination of first and second generation immigrants in those countries. The stringency of naturalization policies in the host countries is also taken into consideration as a mechanism of the development of these relationships. The results confirm that a country’s naturalization policies fairly represent most ATII indicators, and that immigrants feel less discriminated against in more welcoming societies. However, no systematic relationship was revealed between the attitude of the native population and the social integration of immigrants. On the other hand, the results suggest lower perceived discrimination and higher social integration of first generation immigrants in countries where the naturalization status of immigrants is more secured, and the possibility of dual nationality is more restricted. The results also show that the perceived discrimination of immigrants does not decline with the duration of residence in the host countries, but the latter revealed a positive relationship with the social integration of immigrants. |
| Keywords: | naturalization policy; social integration; perceived discrimination; attitude of the native population; |
| JEL: | J10 F22 Z13 |
| Date: | 2018–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cer:papers:wp629&r=mig |
| By: | Christopher F. Baum (Boston College; DIW Berlin; CESIS, KTH Royal Institute of Technology); Linda Dastory (CESIS, KTH Royal Institute of Technology); Hans Lööf (CESIS, KTH Royal Institute of Technology); Andreas Stephan (Jönköping International Business School; DIW Berlin) |
| Abstract: | STEM workers are considered to be key drivers for economic growth in the developed world. Migrant workers play an increasing role in the supply of this occupational category. We study the universe of STEM workers in the Swedish economy over the period 2003-2015 and find that migrants are less likely to form their own business, but those who are entrepreneurs earn income at least as large as that of their native-born counterparts. While the income differential for labor migrants may be partially explained by self-selection, the estimated effect is not significantly different between natives and refugee migrants. |
| Keywords: | STEM, migration, entrepreneurship, income, panel data |
| JEL: | F22 L26 J44 J61 O14 |
| Date: | 2018–10–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:boc:bocoec:965&r=mig |
| By: | Chamberlin, J.; Sitko, N.; Jayne, T. |
| Abstract: | While the bulk of migration literature in Africa has focused on the movement of people from rural to urban areas, much less is known about rural mobility, including its magnitude, drivers, and implications for agricultural development. Using nationally representative survey data for Zambia, we document very high levels of rural mobility throughout the country, and show that this movement is correlated with both land and labor market conditions. About 20% of rural households on average have moved from elsewhere, with highest in-migration rates (~30%) in more accessible, higher density areas, reflecting the importance of wage-employment and services as pull factors. We find that rural in-migrants in relatively accessible areas are wealthier than in-migrants in less accessible areas, although in-migrants are wealthier than non-migrants in all areas. Furthermore, rural in-migrants exhibit greater use of inputs, agricultural productivity, land use intensity and market integration than their non-migrant neighbors. Impacts of in-migration on receiving communities appear to be virtuous: in addition to descriptive indicators that indicate cash injections into local economies (e.g. via greater propensity to hire in labor and services), we find econometric evidence of positive spillover effects of neighborhood in-migration rates on farm-level land productivity outcomes. Acknowledgement : This work was funded by a grant from the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM), which is led by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and funded by CGIAR Fund Donors. |
| Keywords: | Labor and Human Capital |
| Date: | 2018–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae18:277404&r=mig |
| By: | David R. Agrawal (University of Kentucky, Department of Economics and Martin School of Public Policy & Administration); Dirk Foremny (IEB, Department of Public Economy, Political Economy and Spanish Economy, Universitat de Barcelona, Facultat d'Economia i Empresa) |
| Abstract: | recent Spanish tax reform granted regions the authority to set income tax rates, resulting in substantial tax di erentials. We use individual-level information from Social Security records over a period of one decade. Conditional on moving, taxes have a significant e ect on location choice. A one percent increase in the net of tax rate for a region relative to others increases the probability of moving to that region by 1.7 percentage points. Focusing on the stock of top-taxpayers, we estimate an elasticity of the number of top taxpayers with respect to net-of-tax rates of 0.85. Using this elasticity, a theoretical model implies that the mechanical increase in tax revenue due to higher tax rates is larger than the loss in tax revenue from the out- ow of migration. |
| Keywords: | Migration, Taxes, Mobility, Rich, Fiscal Decentralization |
| JEL: | H24 H31 H73 J61 R23 |
| Date: | 2018–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:xrp:wpaper:xreap2018-9&r=mig |
| By: | Ghebru, Hosaena; Amare, Mulubrhan; Mavrotas, George; Ogunniyi, Adebayo |
| Abstract: | The paper examines the role of land access in youth migration and employment decisions using a two wave panel data set from the Living Standards Measurement Study—Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) from Nigeria. Overall, the findings show that the size of expected land inheritance is significantly and negatively associated with long distance migration and migration to urban areas, while a similar impact is negligible when a broader definition of migration is adopted and when migration is deemed as temporary. A more disaggregated analysis by considering individual characteristics of the youth shows that results are more elastic for older youth and those that are less educated, while we find no difference when comparisons are made by gender. Similar analysis on the influence of land access on youth employment choices shows strong evidence that the larger the size of the expected land inheritance the lower the likelihood of the youth being involved in non-agricultural activities and a higher chance of staying in agriculture or the dual sector. The results further reveal that youth in areas with a high level of agricultural commercialization and modernization seem to be more responsive to land access considerations in making migration and employment decisions than are youth residing in less commercialized areas. Finally, the results from the differential analysis suggest that rural-to-urban migration and the likelihood of youth involvement in the dual economy is more responsive to the size of the expected land inheritance for less educated youth as compared to more educated ones. |
| Keywords: | NIGERIA; WEST AFRICA; AFRICA SOUTH OF SAHARA; AFRICA ; land access; migration; youth; employment; rural urban migration; land inheritance |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:nsspwp:58&r=mig |
| By: | Ferrari, Irene (Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA)) |
| Abstract: | This paper uses a matching method to provide a first estimate of the nativity wealth gap among older households in Europe. This approach does not require to impose any functional form on wealth and avoids validity-out-of-the-support assumptions; furthermore, it allows not only the estimation of the mean of the wealth gap but also its distribution for the common-support sub-population. The results show that on average there is a positive and significant wealth gap between natives and migrants. However, the average gap may be misleading as the distribution of the gap reveals that immigrant households in the upper part of the wealth distribution are better off, and those in the lower part of the wealth distribution are worse off, than comparable native households. Although intra-European migrant households are better off than non-European ones, a heterogeneity analysis reveals that the former have also suffered most from migrating in terms of wealth, as their wealth gap is sizable and cannot be explained by observable characteristics. The same is true for households who migrated as adults, as opposed to those who migrated at younger ages. |
| JEL: | D31 J15 E21 |
| Date: | 2017–12–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mea:meawpa:201708&r=mig |