Labor market transitions of immigrants with emphasis on marginalization and self-employment

In developed countries, immigrants are more likely to be nonemployed and self-employed compared to natives. Based on register data of male immigrants in Denmark, we performed a detailed investigation of the immigrant–native difference in transition patterns across labor market states. We find that a high proportion of immigrants from non-Western countries tend to be marginalized relative to natives, and they tend to use self-employment to escape marginalization.

The effect of immigration on the labor market performance of native-born workers: some evidence for Spain

This paper provides an approximation to the labor market effects of immigrants in Spain, a country where labor market institutions and immigration policy exhibit some peculiarities, during the second half of the 1990s, the period in which immigration flows accelerated. By using alternative data sets, we estimate both the impact of legal and total immigration flows on the employment rates and wages of native workers, accounting for the possible occupational and geographical mobility of immigrants and native-born workers. Using different samples and estimation procedures, we have not found a significant negative effect of immigration on either the employment rates or wages of native workers.

Natives, the foreign-born and high school equivalents: new evidence on the returns to the GED

We explore the labor market returns to the General Education Development (GED) exam for US natives and the foreign-born. We find that foreign-born men with a GED who received all of their formal schooling abroad earn significantly more than either foreign-schooled high school dropouts or graduates. In contrast, among US natives, GED recipients earn less than high school graduates but significantly more than dropouts. The returns for natives become larger over the life cycle and are not due to cohort effects. Our findings indicate that the GED may be more valuable in the labor market than some previous research suggests.

The dynamics of immigrant welfare and labor market behavior

This paper analyzes transitions into and out of social assistance, unemployment, and employment. We estimate a dynamic multinomial logit model, controlling for endogenous initial condition and unobserved heterogeneity, using a large representative Swedish panel data set. The empirical results suggest that particularly refugee immigrants display a greater degree of “structural” state dependence than natives. The high welfare participation rates among refugee immigrants may be due to the existence of a “welfare trap”, while participation among natives and non-refugee immigrants is largely due to permanent unobserved characteristics. These results suggest that welfare reforms may have differential effects on refugee immigrants and natives.

Immigration as a commitment device

This paper shows that the admittance of immigrants who are on average less skilled than natives can be part of a support-maximizing government policy despite a general political bias in favour of the poor. We make this point in a simple model with redistributive unemployment insurance. Once wage contracts are binding, the government has an incentive to increase the unemployment benefit, which leads to excessive unemployment. Affecting the political balance within the constituency, immigrants can serve as a commitment device against this time inconsistency. We show that this possibility can be greatly promoted by restrictions on political naturalization.

The political economy of social exclusion, with implications for immigration policy

Minorities such as ethnic and immigration groups have often been subject to exclusion through labor market discrimination, residential and employment segregation policies, business ownership regulations, restrictions on political participation, access to public services, and more. This paper studies the dynamics of minority exclusion. From the viewpoint of the dominant majority, the exclusion decision balances the motive to redistribute income in its favor and the interest in avoiding potential civic unrest or even violent confrontation with the minority. The analysis also has implications for immigration policies, suggesting that they have to take this group dynamics into account.

The educational attainment of second-generation mainland Chinese immigrants in Taiwan

The social status and well-being of political immigrants’ children are seldom touched upon in literature. This paper focuses on the impact of refugee experience on the relative educational attainment of second-generation immigrants in Taiwan. In contrast with the results in van Ours and Veenman (J Popul Econ 16(4):739–753, 2003) and Riphahn (J Popul Econ 16(4):711–737, 2003) who showed that second-generation immigrants lag behind their native counterparts, this paper’s principle finding is that the father’s immigration status can help his children achieve a higher educational qualification than native Taiwanese after controlling the relevant determinants of educational attainment, including parental background and the neighborhood where the interviewee grows up. In addition, women born in the earlier cohort benefit more by their fathers’ immigration status than their male counterparts do. However, Taiwanese schooling advances across generations are impressive, whereby the gap in schooling attainment between second-generation immigrants and native Taiwanese is found to decline over time.

Explaining trends in UK immigration

Since the 1970s Britain has gone from being a country of net emigration to one of net immigration, with a trend increase in immigration of more than 100,000 per year. This paper represents the first attempt to model the variations in net migration for British and for foreign citizens, across countries and over time. A simple economic model, which includes the selection effects of differing income distributions at home and abroad, largely accounts for the variations in the data. The results suggest that although improved economic performance in the UK relative to overseas has tended to increase immigration, rising UK inequality has had an even larger effect. Immigration policies at home and abroad have also increased net immigration, particularly in the 1990s.

Welfare effects of illegal immigration

This paper analyzes the welfare effect of illegal immigration on the host country within a dynamic general equilibrium framework and shows that it is positive for two reasons. First, immigrants are paid less than their marginal product, and second, after an increase in immigration, domestic households find it optimal to increase their holdings of capital. It is also shown that dynamic inefficiency may arise, despite the fact that the model is of the Ramsey type. Nevertheless, the introduction of a minimum wage, which leads to job competition between domestic unskilled workers and immigrants reverses all of the above results.

The substitutability of labor between immigrants and natives in the Canadian labor market: circa 1995

This paper examines the substitutability or complementarity between Canadian-born and immigrant workers. These are examined by estimating a set of wage equations using a generalized Leontief production function. The paper finds that, in general, there is no displacement of Canadian-born workers by immigrants. Recent immigrants affect the native-born positively, while older immigrants are neither substitute nor complement for natives. However, the effects differ across industries. Overall, the evidence that immigrants harm the opportunities of native-born workers is scant.

Immigrant assimilation pre and post labour market entry: evidence from the UK Labour Force Survey

We estimate models of employment an earnings for a sample of white and non-white male immigrants drawn from the Labour Force Survey between 1993 and 2004. Immigrants who arrived to enter the labour market (labour market entrants) are distinguished from those who arrived to complete their education (education entrants). Diverse patterns of labour market assimilation are found depending on ethnicity and immigrant type. Amongst labour market entrants, whites do better than non-whites, whilst amongst education entrants, highly qualified prime-age non-whites perform as well as their white counterparts. Relative to white natives, labour market outcomes for all immigrant groups have a tendency to decline with age.

How important is homeland education for refugees’ economic position in The Netherlands?

We use data on refugees admitted to The Netherlands that include registration of education in their homeland by immigration officers. Such data are seldom available. We investigate the quality and reliability of the registrations and then use them to assess effects on refugees’ economic position during the first 5 years after arrival. The most remarkable finding is the absence of returns to higher education.

The emigration of immigrants, return vs onward migration: evidence from Sweden

This study analyzes emigration propensities for natives and immigrants delineating among immigrant emigrants between return and onward migration. Results indicate that emigrants are positively selected in terms of upper education. Well-educated immigrants have a higher probability of leaving for third-country destinations than returning to countries of origin. Predicted age–income profiles for immigrants show that return migrants have higher adjusted mean income levels than non-emigrants up to the age of 40. Onward migrants have lower predicted income levels across the age distribution due to this group’s composition and relatively low employment levels in Sweden. Separate estimations by region of origin indicate that within each group, onward migrants are more positively selected then return migrants in terms of income.

Too many migrants, too few services: a model of decision-making on immigration and integration with cultural distance

We model the political demand for immigrants as a trade-off that native voters face between having services, assumed to be produced only by unskilled and nonassimilated immigrants, and experiencing disutility due to the immigrant workers having a culture different from the native culture. Immigrants decide whether to integrate into the native culture. We show that if services are priced according to per unit costs, the market demand for immigrants will exceed the political demand. Market forces then lead to higher services prices, implying that the initially allowed number of immigrants is ‘politically’ too large.

How to partly bounce back the struggle against illegal immigration to the source countries

Recent models on the dynamics of immigration control claim that tightening internal borders may trigger the formation of networks supporting clandestine foreign workers. This may, in turn, increase the overall stock of illegal immigrants in the economy. One possible solution to this threatening situation might be to partly bounce back the struggle against illegal immigration to the source countries. This paper suggests that under certain conditions, the receiving country should direct some of the resources earmarked for coping with the problem of the illegal flow of workers to financially supporting the source countries, allowing them to compete among themselves for such aid. This support would be allocated according to the relative effort made by each source country in curbing illegal immigration, thereby motivating them to moderate the phenomenon. The model is also applicable to other fields of negative externalities, such as the smuggling of drugs and weapons, terrorism, and pollution.

Explaining Cross-Country Differences in Attitudes Towards Immigration in the EU-15

In this paper, we use data from the first two rounds of the European Social Survey to analyze the extent to which differences in average attitudes towards immigration across the EU-15 countries may be explained by differences in socioeconomic characteristics and individually perceived consequences of immigration, using an extension of a decomposition technique developed by Fairlie (2005). We find that despite the significant effects of socioeconomic characteristics on attitudes, differences in the distributions of these characteristics can only explain a modest share of the cross-country variation in average attitudes. A larger part can be explained by differences in perceived consequences of immigration, but the main part is still left unexplained. Apart from providing useful input for policy makers working in the area of immigration policy, this raises a number of questions for further research for which the ESS data can be successfully applied.

Are there gender and country of origin differences in immigrant labor market outcomes across European destinations?

The 1994–2000 waves of the European Community Household Panel are used to study the earnings of immigrants as compared to native workers in 15 European countries. At the time of arrival, there is a significant negative partial effect of foreign birth on individual earnings compared to the native born in the destination of around 40%. These differences vary across origins and destinations and by gender. Immigrant earnings catch-up to those of the native born after around 18 years in the destination. Schooling matters more for earnings for women, whereas, language skills are relatively more important for men.

Heterogeneity in the intergenerational transmission of educational attainment: evidence from Switzerland on natives and second-generation immigrants

This study applies rich data from the 2000 Swiss census to investigate the patterns of intergenerational education transmission for natives and second-generation immigrants. The level of secondary schooling attained by youth aged 17 is related to their parents’ educational outcomes based on data on the entire Swiss population. Extending economic theories of child educational attainment, we derive hypotheses regarding the patterns of intergenerational education transmission. The data yield substantial heterogeneity in intergenerational transmission across population groups. Only a small share of this heterogeneity is explained by the predictions of economic theory.

The Quality of Life in South Korea

The AsiaBarometer survey of 1,023 respondents shows Life in Korea is highly modernized and digitalized without being much globalized. Despite the modernization and digitalization of their lifestyles, ordinary citizens still prioritize materialistic values more than post-materialistic values, and they remain least satisfied in the material life sphere. A multivariate analysis of the Korean survey reveals that their positive assessments of their standard of living and marriage are the most powerful influences on the quality of life they experience. Remarkable improvements in the objective conditions of life for the past three decades have failed to transform Korea into a nation of well-being.

Money Does not Buy Happiness: Or Does It? A Reassessment Based on the Combined Effects of Wealth,Income and Consumption

The paper uses household economic panel data from five countries—Australia, Britain, Germany, Hungary and The Netherlands—to provide a reassessment of the impact of economic well-being on happiness. The main conclusion is that happiness is considerably more affected by economic circumstances than previously believed. In all five countries wealth affects life satisfaction more than income. In the countries for which consumption data are available (Britain and Hungary), non-durable consumption expenditures also prove at least as important to happiness as income.