Abstract
This paper studies the effects of immigration on the allocation of occupational physical burden and work injury risks. Using data for England and Wales from the Labour Force Survey (2003–2013), we find that, on average, immigration leads to a reallocation of UK-born workers towards jobs characterised by lower physical burden and injury risk. The results also show important differences across skill groups. Immigration reduces the average physical burden of UK-born workers with medium levels of education, but has no significant effect on those with low levels. We also find that that immigration led to an improvement self-reported measures of native workers’ health. These findings, together with the evidence that immigrants report lower injury rates than natives, suggest that the reallocation of tasks could reduce overall health care costs and the human and financial costs typically associated with workplace injuries.
Highlights
There is a large literature exploring the impacts of immigration on different factors such as labour markets, public finances, delivery of public services, housing market and criminality, among others (Dustmann et al 2013; Dustmann et al 2010; Dustmann and Frattini 2014; Sa 2015; Bell et al 2013; Giuntella et al 2018)
Standard errors are clustered at the local authority level and are reported in parentheses
This article contributes to the literature on the labor market effects of immigration by estimating its impact on the physical burden and work-related health risk of UKborn workers in England and Wales from 2003 to 2013
Summary
There is a large literature exploring the impacts of immigration on different factors such as labour markets, public finances, delivery of public services, housing market and criminality, among others (Dustmann et al 2013; Dustmann et al 2010; Dustmann and Frattini 2014; Sa 2015; Bell et al 2013; Giuntella et al 2018). Our results suggest that immigration pushes UK-born workers towards jobs characterised by lower physical burden and injury risk. The effects are large for UK-born males with medium levels of education holding physically demanding jobs These workers have lower search and training costs for new jobs and can take advantage of the increased demand for communication-intensive jobs induced by the inflow of immigrants. Consistent with these findings, immigration reduces the average occupational risk for natives with medium levels of education.
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