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Title: Migrant Selection and Socioeconomic Outcomes: Evidence from 19th-Century Sweden

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2018

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Abstract: During the Age of Mass Migration, 30 million Europeans left their home countries and emigrated to the United States. Sweden had one of the highest out-migration rates of the era. Between 1860 to 1920, around 1.3 million people—a quarter of the population—left Sweden to seek opportunity in the United States. This essay delves into one particular aspect of this historic migration episode. I study the socioeconomic outcomes of Swedish emigrants compared to those who chose to remain in Sweden. Starting with the 1880 Swedish population census, I locate the same individuals 20 years later in either the Swedish or U.S. censuses of 1900. For each year, I use their occupational information to assign each person a standardized socioeconomic status score using the HISCLASS scheme, after which I can compare the outcomes of emigrants and non-emigrants. In the initial results, I find a significant positive relationship between emigration and socioeconomic attainment, even after controlling for observable pre-emigration characteristics. Then, I use household fixed effects to compare migrants only to their non-migrating siblings. This eliminates the significance of the migration effect, suggest- ing that the positive socioeconomic outcomes of Swedish emigrants can be explained by their pre-emigration abilities and self-selection.

Url: http://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=8962406&fileOId=8962408

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Authors: Strandberg, Aron

Publisher: Lund University

Data Collections: IPUMS NHGIS

Topics: Migration and Immigration

Countries: Sweden