Low-skilled Immigrants Research Articles

The Effects of Legal Status on Employment and Health Outcomes among Low-Skilled Chinese Immigrants in New York City

Using a 2004 survey done in New York City’s Chinese community, we explore the extent to which legal status affects immigrants’ labor market performance and health status. We focus on five issues related to legal status of immigrants: wages, weekly working hours, employment location, self-rated health, and health care utilization. Our results show that undocumented immigrants are more likely to work for exceptionally long hours and are less likely to see a doctor when they get sick. However, we also find that current legal status does not have a significant effect on current health status. This work contributes to a growing literature on how legal status is linked to labor market and health consequences.

Imported Inequality? Immigration and Income Inequality in the American States

AbstractIn this article, we use data from the American states from 1996 to 2008 to explore the effects of immigration on income inequality. Empirical evidence from both static and dynamic models shows that the foreign-born population has a strong positive effect on state-level income inequality, even when we control for a range of federal and state political and economic contextual variables. We also find that the positive relationship between immigration and state income inequality is driven primarily by low-skill immigrants (rather than high-skill immigrants), and we provide some evidence that high-skill immigrants lower income inequality for some segments of the income distribution. We conclude that immigration—particularly low-skilled immigration—has an important effect on income inequality in the American states.

Technology, Skill, and the Wage Structure

Technical change, even if it is limited in scope, can have effects that ripple throughout the economy. Here a flexible and tractable framework, with heterogeneous workers and technologies and many tasks, is used to analyze the general equilibrium effects of technical change for a limited set of tasks. The equilibria feature positively assortative matching between workers and technologies. The effects of technical change on employment, output, prices, and wages up and down the skill and technology ladders are sharply characterized. The effects of low-skill immigration, minimum-wage legislation, and international trade are also described.

How immigration affects investment and productivity in host and home countries

Migration policies need to consider how immigration affects investment behavior and productivity, and how these effects vary with the type of migration. College-educated immigrants may do more to stimulate foreign direct investment and research and development than low-skilled immigrants, and productivity effects would be expected to be highest for immigrants in scientific and engineering fields. By raising the demand for housing, immigration also spurs residential investment. However, residential investment is unlikely to expand enough to prevent housing costs from rising, which has implications for income distribution in society.

When Time Binds: Returns to Working Long Hours and the Gender Wage Gap Among the Highly Skilled

This paper explores the relationship between gender differences in hours worked, the returns to working long hours, and the gender pay gap among highly educated workers. Using a cross-section of occupations, Goldin (2014) documents that occupations characterized by high returns to overwork are also those with the largest gender gap in earnings. To provide a causal link between the demand for long hours and how it relates to gender wage gaps, we exploit supply side shocks – generated by intercity variation in low-skilled immigrant flows – to examine whether reductions in the cost of supplying longer hours of work allow women to close the gap in hours of work and benefit from higher wages. We find that low-skilled immigration leads to a reduction in a city's gender gap in overwork, as well as in the gender pay gap in occupations that disproportionately reward longer hours of work.

Immigration, Poverty, and Socioeconomic Inequality, edited by David Card and Steven Raphael. 2013. Series: National Poverty Center Series on Poverty and Public Policy. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. 469 + xiv. ISBN: 978-0-87154-498-8, $55.

Immigration, Poverty, and Socioeconomic Inequality, edited by David Card and Steven Raphael. 2013. Series: National Poverty Center Series on Poverty and Public Policy. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. 469 + xiv. ISBN: 978-0-87154-498-8, $55.

Ethnic enclaves and immigrant economic integration

Immigrants are typically not evenly distributed within host countries; instead they tend to cluster in particular neighborhoods. But does clustering in ethnic enclaves help explain the persistent differences in employment rates and earnings between immigrants and the native population? Empirical studies consistently find that residing in an enclave can increase earnings. While it is still ambiguous whether mainly low-skilled immigrants benefit, or whether employment probabilities are affected, it is clear that effects are driven by enclave “quality” (in terms of income, education, and employment rates) rather than enclave size.

Can immigrants help women “have it all”? Immigrant labor and women’s joint fertility and labor supply decisions

AbstractThis paper explores how inflows of low-skilled immigrants impact the tradeoffs women face when making joint fertility and labor supply decisions. I find increases in fertility and decreases in labor force participation rates among high-skilled US-born women in cities that have experienced larger immigrant inflows. Most interestingly, these changes have been accompanied by decreases in the strength of the negative correlation between childbearing and labor force participation, an often-used measure of the difficulty with which women combine motherhood and labor market work. Using a structured statistical model, I show that the immigrant-induced attenuation of this negative correlation can explain about 24% of the immigrant-induced increases in the joint likelihood of childbearing and labor force participation in the US between the years 1980 and 2000.JEL codesD10, F22, J13, J22, R23

Trading Off Welfare and Immigration in Europe.

In this paper, we explore the trade-off Europe faces when choosing between immigration from poor countries and welfare spending. Using data from the European Social Survey on sixteen countries from 2002-2012, we document that voter preferences shifted in favor of redistribution but polarized over low-skill immigration. Notably, there is a sharp increase in the share of individuals supporting the welfare state but heavily opposing immigration. In order to provide an economic explanation for these phenomena, we present a model where support for both immigration and redistributive policies are potentially motivated by altruism. Using this model, we show how rising unemployment rates, shares of foreign-born citizens and aggregate education can explain observed shifts in policy preferences.

The Outsourcing of House Cleaning and Low Skill Immigrant Workers

This paper explains why the outsourcing of domestic household tasks is more prevalent in some OECD countries than in others by examining the effects of country-level labor market characteristics. This paper uses micro-level data from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP), “Family and Gender Roles III” (2002 module) to carry out a two-level analysis on a sample of 22 countries. The paper examines the effects of both individual- and national level factors that might affect a couple’s decision to outsource house cleaning to someone outside of the family. The paper finds that, in addition to individual level variables such as education and household income, the percentage of low skill immigrants in the country affects the likelihood of outsourcing house cleaning.

Immigrants' Effect on Native Workers: New Analysis on Longitudinal Data

Using longitudinal data on the universe of workers in Denmark during the period 1991–2008, we track the labor market outcomes of low-skilled natives in response to an exogenous inflow of low-skilled immigrants. We innovate on previous identification strategies by considering immigrants distributed across municipalities by a refugee dispersal policy in place between 1986 and 1998. We find that an increase in the supply of refugee-country immigrants pushed less educated native workers (especially the young and low-tenured ones) to pursue less manual-intensive occupations. As a result immigration had positive effects on native unskilled wages, employment, and occupational mobility. (JEL J15, J24, J31, J61, J62)

Immigration and Wage Dynamics: Evidence from the Mexican Peso Crisis

How does the US labor market absorb low-skilled immigration? In the short run, high-immigration locations see their low-skilled labor force increase, native low-skilled wages decrease, and the relative price of rentals increase. Internal relocation dissipates this shock spatially. In the long run, the only lasting consequences are (a) worse labor market conditions for low-skilled natives who entered the labor force in high-immigration years, and (b) lower housing prices in high-immigrant locations, when immigrant workers disproportionately enter the construction sector and lower construction costs. I use a quantitative dynamic spatial equilibrium many-region model to obtain the policy-relevant counterfactuals.

Explaining the Unexplained: Residual Wage Inequality, Manufacturing Decline, and Low-Skilled Immigration

This paper investigates whether the increasing residual wage trend is related to manufacturing decline and the influx of low-skilled immigrants. There is a vast literature arguing that technological change, international trade, and institutional factors have played a significant role in the inequality trend. However, most of the trend is unexplained by observable factors. This paper attempts to explain the growth in the unexplained variance of wages by exploiting variation across locations (states or cities) in the United States in the local level of residual The evidence shows that a shrinking manufacturing sector increases inequality. In addition, an influx of low-skilled immigrants increases inequality, but this effect is concentrated in areas with a steeper manufacturing decline. Similar results are found for two alternative measures linked to increasing inequality: the increasing return to education and the decline in the employment rate of non-college men. The overall evidence suggests that the manufacturing and immigration trends have hollowed-out the overall demand for middle-skilled workers in all sectors, while increasing the supply of workers in lower skilled jobs. Both phenomena are producing downward pressure on the relative wages of workers at the low end of the income distribution.

Immigration and the Human Capital of Natives

Abstract Large low-skilled immigration flows influence both the distribution of local school resources and also local relative wages, which exert counterbalancing pressures on the local return to schooling. I use the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS:88) and U.S. Census data to show that low-skilled immigration to an area induces local natives to improve their performance in school, attain more years of schooling, and take jobs that involve communication-intensive tasks for which they (native English speakers) have a comparative advantage. These results point out mechanisms that mitigate the potentially negative effect of immigration on natives’ wages.

IMMIGRATION POLICY-MAKING IN THE EUROPEAN UNION:A CASE STUDY ON THE ADOPTION OF DIRECTIVE 2003/109/EC AND ITS IMPLEMENTATION BY GERMANY AND THE NETHERLANDS

This article analyzes the ascent of immigrant-related policies in the European Union by identifying the most important actors influencing this process through an examination of key developments such as the Tampere European Council and the Amsterdam Treaty which paved the way for the adoption of Directive 2003/109/EC on the status and rights of thirdcountry nationals. In doing so, the key question to be discovered is the role of the EU with regards to immigrant integration by investigating a key European-level instrument as the case study, namely the adoption of Directive 2003/109/EC which is the most recent and relevant legislation establishing the status of third-country nationals in Europe. By examining whether the adoption of this Directive has led to any progress in terms of the rights of third-country nationals in Germany and the Netherlands, I try to assess whether the adoption of the Directive may be explained with the supranationalist view that the Commission has a strong supranational role as a political entrepreneur that promotes common norms and values, or it is a reflection of the prevalence of liberal intergovernmentalism and the rationalist motivations of the Member States to promote their interests when reaching a final compromise. The conclusions show that Member States choose to cooperate in these areas mainly because of their socioeconomic concerns such as restricting the increasing numbers of asylum, low-skilled immigration, the goal of global competitiveness and attracting qualified labor force. The preservation of these interests and the subordination of immigrant rights to national concerns reveal that Member States negotiate European policies by almost exclusively focusing on the distribution of gains unlike suggested by the supranational perspective which argues that negotiations are concerned with achieving an efficient policy outcome. Keywords: Immigration, Immigrant Integration, Third-Country National, Supranationalism, Liberal intergovernmentalism.

Immigration and the Human Capital of Natives

Large low-skilled immigration flows influence both the distribution of local school resources and also local relative wages, which exert counterbalancing pressures on the local return to schooling. I use the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS:88) and U.S. Census data to show that low-skilled immigration to an area induces local natives to improve their performance in school, attain more years of schooling, and take jobs that involve communication-intensive tasks for which they (native English speakers) have a comparative advantage. These results point out mechanisms that mitigate the potentially negative effect of immigration on natives’ wages.

Immigrants' Effect on Native Workers: New Analysis on Longitudinal Data

Using longitudinal data on the universe of workers in Denmark during the period 1991-2008 we track the labor market outcomes of low skilled natives in response to an exogenous inflow of low skilled immigrants. We innovate on previous identification strategies by considering immigrants distributed across municipalities by a refugee dispersal policy in place between 1986 and 1998. We find that an increase in the supply of refugee-country immigrants pushed less educated native workers (especially the young and low-tenured ones) to pursue less manual-intensive occupations. As a result immigration had positive effects on native unskilled wages, employment and occupational mobility.

Immigration and Wage Dynamics: Evidence from the Mexican Peso Crisis

How does the US labor market absorb low-skilled immigration? I address this question using the 1995 Mexican Peso Crisis, an exogenous push factor that raised Mexican migration to the US. In the short run, high-immigration states see their low-skilled labor force increase and native low-skilled wages decrease, with an implied local labor demand elasticity of -.7. Internal relocation dissipates this shock spatially. In the long run, the only lasting consequences are for low-skilled natives who entered the labor force in high-immigration years. A simple quantitative many-region model allows me to obtain the counterfactual local wage evolution absent the immigration shock.

An incentive mechanism to break the low-skill immigration deadlock

The international mobility of low-skilled workers is constrained by immigration restrictions set by rich countries, preventing extreme poverty from declining in the developing world. Under aversion to extreme poverty, one country's immigration policy affects the welfare of other countries: “nationalist” political decisions are subject to a prisoner's dilemma. Taking advantage of efficiency gains from coordination, we propose an alternative allocation of labor, which minimizes extreme poverty while keeping rich countries as well off as in the nationalist situation. This allocation can be decentralized through international taxes and subsidies. Numerical simulations show that the role of aversion to poverty is negligible when considering each country separately, but becomes important for the design of a coordinated migration policy.

High-skilled immigrants in times of crisis. A cross-European analysis

In times of economic turmoil, do high-skilled immigrants (HSIMs) tremble, or are they better suited than non-immigrants or low-skill immigrants to cope with such instability? This paper sheds some light on HSIMs’ social integration during crisis by considering their life satisfaction, ability to get paid work, and civic participation. European Social Survey (ESS) data are used in multilevel models aiming to disentangle the effect of recession in the host economy from that of living through times of crisis. The existing literature does not point in a clear direction, but the use of acculturation perspective, along with the self-selection hypothesis, help to derive clearer expectations. Diverse pathways are revealed. In troubled economies, HSIMs succeed in increasing their access to paid work and involvement in organizations, but their life satisfaction decreases. In functional economies, the situation is reversed: Life satisfaction seems to have a protective role in relation to the slightly higher difficulties in the labor market and lesser civic participation.