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on Economics of Human Migration |
| By: | Joanna Venator (Boston College) |
| Abstract: | Dual-earner couples’ decisions of where to live and work often result in one spouse – the trailing spouse – experiencing earnings losses at the time of a move. This paper examines how married couples’ migration decisions differentially impact men’s and women’s earnings and the role that policy can play in improving post-move outcomes for trailing spouses. I use panel data from the NLSY97 and a generalized difference- in-differences design to show that access to unemployment insurance (UI) for trailing spouses increases long-distance migration rates by 1.9–2.3 percentage points (38–46%) for married couples. I find that women are the primary beneficiaries of this policy, with higher UI uptake following a move and higher annual earnings of $4,500–$12,000 three years post-move. I then build and estimate a structural model of dual-earner couples’ migration decisions to evaluate the effects of a series of counterfactual policies. I show that increasing the likelihood of joint distant offers substantively increases migration rates, increases women’s post-move employment rates, and improves both men and women’s earnings growth at the time of a move. However, unconditional subsidies for migration that are not linked to having an offer in hand at the time of the move reduce post-move earnings for both men and women, with stronger effects for women. |
| Keywords: | unemployment insurance, migration, economic geography, household behavior and family economics |
| JEL: | D1 J1 J16 J61 J65 R5 |
| Date: | 2022–09–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:boc:bocoec:1052&r= |
| By: | Garrett Anstreicher (University of Wisconsin-Madison); Joanna Venator (Boston College) |
| Abstract: | Women in the United States frequently rely on childcare from extended family but can only do so if they live in the same location as them. This paper studies how child care costs, the location of extended family, and fertility events influence both the labor force attachment and labor mobility of women in the United States. We begin by empirically documenting strong patterns of women returning to their home locations in anticipation of fertility events, indicating that the desire for intergenerational time transfers is an important motivator of home migration. Moreover, women who reside in their parent’s location experience a substantial long-run reduction in their child earnings penalty. Next, we build a dynamic model of labor force participation and migration to assess the incidence of counterfactual scenarios and childcare policies. We find that childcare subsidies increase lifetime earnings and labor mobility for women, with particularly strong effects for women who are ever single mothers and Blacks. Ignoring migration can understate the welfare benefits of these policies by a meaningful extent. |
| Keywords: | Migration, childcare, female labor supply, human capital |
| JEL: | J13 J22 J61 |
| Date: | 2022–09–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:boc:bocoec:1051&r= |
| By: | Nikita Sangwan; Swati Sharma (ISI and IEG, Delhi) |
| Abstract: | In this study we focus on the lockdown in response to the Covid-19 pandemic that highlighted the vulnerabilities faced by women in labor markets – globally and domestically. We investigate whether public policy measures mitigate these vulnerabilities. In particular, we study the implications of lockdown triggered reverse migration on Labor Force Participation of rural women, focusing on mandated provisions under MGNREGA and GKRA. We find evidence of complementarity of the two social employment schemes and rule out any crowding out of NREGA person-days by GKRA. Our analysis shows that despite these schemes rural women lost employment due to competition from men. Their share in NREGA person-days fell by 0.4% during the pandemic. Interestingly, the mandated provisions for women in NREGA works helped women preserve their employment status. Our findings underscore the need for special provisions and targeted programs for women to reduce their withdrawal and enhance their participation in the labor market. Our results are robust to seasonality patterns in rural employment and MGNREGA. Furthermore, we validate our findings using monthly individual-level employment data from Consumer Pyramids Household Survey (CPHS), CMIE. |
| Keywords: | Covid-19, Rural labor market, Gender, Reverse migration, NREGA, GKRA. |
| JEL: | J08 J16 O15 |
| Date: | 2022–07–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:awe:wpaper:453&r= |
| By: | Ben Sprung-Keyser; Nathaniel Hendren; Sonya Porter |
| Abstract: | We examine the geographic incidence of local labor market growth across locations of childhood residence. We ask: when wages grow in a given US labor market, do the benefits flow to individuals growing up in nearby or distant locations? We begin by constructing new statistics on migration rates across labor markets between childhood and young adulthood. This migration matrix shows 80% of young adults migrate less than 100 miles from where they grew up. 90% migrate less than 500 miles. Migration distances are shorter for Black and Hispanic individuals and for those from low income families. These migration patterns provide information on the first order geographic incidence of local wage growth. Next, we explore the responsiveness of location choices to economic shocks. Using geographic variation induced by the recovery from the Great Recession, we estimate the elasticity of migration with respect to increases in local labor market wage growth. We develop and implement a novel test for validating whether our identifying wage variation is driven by changes in labor market opportunities rather than changes in worker composition due to sorting. We find that higher wages lead to increased in-migration, decreased out-migration and a partial capitalization of wage increases into local prices. Our results imply that for a 2 rank point increase in annual wages (approximately $1600) in a given commuting zone (CZ), approximately 99% of wage gains flow to those who would have resided in the CZ in the absence of the wage change. The geographically concentrated nature of most migration and the small magnitude of these migration elasticities suggest that the incidence of labor market conditions across childhood residences is highly local. For many individuals, the “radius of economic opportunity” is quite narrow. |
| Date: | 2022–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cen:wpaper:22-27&r= |
| By: | Dossche, Maarten; Kolndrekaj, Aleksandra; Propst, Maximilian; Ramos Perez, Javier; Slacalek, Jiri |
| Abstract: | We use household surveys to describe differences in wages, income, wealth and liquid assets of households born in their country of residence (“natives”) vs. those born in other EU and non-EU countries (“immigrants”). The differences in wealth are more substantial than the differences in wages and incomes: immigrants earn on average about 30% lower wages than natives and hold roughly 60% less net wealth. For all variables, only a small fraction of differences between natives and immigrants—around 30%—can be explained by differences in demographics (age, gender, marital status, education, occupation, sector of employment). Immigrants are more likely to be liquidity constrained: while about 17% of natives can be labelled as “hand-to-mouth” (holding liquid assets worth less than two weeks of income), the corresponding share is 20% for households born in another EU country and 29% for those born outside the EU. Employment rates of immigrants are substantially more sensitive to fluctuations in aggregate employment. Monetary policy easing stimulates more strongly employment of individuals born outside the EU. JEL Classification: J15, D31, E52 |
| Keywords: | distribution of income and wealth, inequality, migration, monetary policy |
| Date: | 2022–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecb:ecbwps:20222719&r= |
| By: | Hippolyte d'Albis (PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement); Ekrame Boubtane (CERDI - Centre d'Etudes et de Recherche en Droit de l'Immatériel - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - Université Paris-Saclay, PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement); Dramane Coulibaly (GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'analyse et de théorie économique - ENS Lyon - École normale supérieure - Lyon - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - UCBL - Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 - Université de Lyon - UJM - Université Jean Monnet [Saint-Étienne] - Université de Lyon - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | This article quantifies the effects of increasing global geopolitical uncertainty on the size of migration flows to Western Europe. Uncertainty is measured by the number of victims of terrorist attacks worldwide. The effect on migration flows is quantified through the estimation of vector autoregressive models on a panel of 15 European countries and on France, thanks to an original migration dataset. The estimations suggest that the flows of permanent migrants are generally reduced by global terrorism. In particular, the increase in uncertainty that followed the attacks of September 11, 2001, caused an 8% drop in flows to Europe and a 19% drop in flows to France. The effect of global uncertainty on the flow of asylum seekers depends on the country: on average in Europe, asylum applications increase with terrorism, but for France, they decrease with terrorism. This difference can be explained by the geographical position and border control policies of France. |
| Keywords: | Uncertainty,Terrorism,Migration,September 11,2001 |
| Date: | 2022–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:psewpa:halshs-03770391&r= |
| By: | Michel Beine; Giovanni Peri; Morgan Raux |
| Abstract: | US universities have attracted hundreds of thousands of international students each year for the last decade. Some of these remain in the US after graduating and contribute to the high skilled labor supply in US labor markets. In this paper, we identify and estimate by how much one more international master’s (or bachelor’s) student increases the skilled labor supply of the US in the short-run. To estimate this "transition rate" we implement an instrumental variable estimation using quasi-random variation in the tuition charged to international students by public US universities in the year that they likely started their studies. We find that attracting an additional international student to a US university increases the local labor supply by about 0.23 employees for master’s students and about 0.11 for bachelor’s students. These averages conceal an important difference. While non-STEM bachelor’s and master’s students had negligible transition rates into US employment, STEM Master students have had significant transition rates around 0.2, especially after the 2008 reform of Optional Practical Training for STEM graduates. |
| JEL: | H7 I2 J6 |
| Date: | 2022–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30431&r= |
| By: | Lach, Saul (Hebrew University, Jerusalem); Sicherman, Nachum (Columbia University) |
| Abstract: | We use data on international migration to study the causal effect of gender discrimination on the sex-ratio of immigrants to the U.S. during the 1970-2019 period. We measure gender discrimination in the countries of origin using the Women, Business, and the Law (WBL) index, which measures legal differences in access to economic opportunities between men and women. Controlling for country fixed effects and regional time trends, as well as for potentially confounding factors, we find that a one standard deviation increase in the WBL index in a country of origin (a decrease in gender discrimination) decreases the share of women immigrating to the U.S. from that country by 1.7 percentage points, on average. This large effect of gender discrimination on the sex ratio of immigrants is robust to specification changes, and is not significant when examining senior citizens. |
| Keywords: | gender discrimination, sex-ratios, international migration |
| JEL: | F22 J16 |
| Date: | 2022–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15487&r= |