Full Citation

Title: The Short-and Long-Run Determinants of Unskilled Immigration into US States

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2012

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Abstract: This paper uses a gravity model of migration to analyze how income diff erentials aff ect the flow of immigrants into U.S. states using annual data from the American CommunitySurvey. We add to existing literature by decomposing income di erentials into short-and long-term components and by focusing on newly arrived less-educated immigrants between 2000-2009. Our sample is unique in that although our interest is in measuring bilateral immigrant in flows (from origin countries into U.S. states), the vast majority ofour observations take zero values. We accommodate for the zeros by using scaled ordinary least squares, a threshold tobit model from Eaton and Tamura (1994), and the two-partmodel to analyze the determinants of immigration. Models that include observations with zero flow values find that recent male immigrants respond to di erences in (short-term)GDP fluctuations between origin countries and U.S. states, and perhaps to (long-term) trend GDP di erences as well. More speci cally, GDP fluctuations pull less-educatedmale immigrants into certain U.S. states, whereas GDP trends push less-educated male immigrants out of their countries of origin. Eff ects for less-educated women are less robust, as GDP coeffcients tend to be much smaller than for men.

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Authors: Simpson, Nicole B.; Sparber, Chad

Publisher: Colgate University

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Methodology and Data Collection, Migration and Immigration

Countries: United States