No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Welfare Migration in Europe
Abstract
The enlargement of the European Union has increased concerns about the role of generous welfare transfers in attracting migrants. This paper explores the issue of welfare migration across the countries of the pre-enlargement European Union and finds a significant but small effect of the generosity of welfare on migration decisions. This effect, however, is still large enough to distort the distribution of migration flows and, possibly, offset the potential benefits of migration as an inflow of mobile labour into countries with traditionally immobile native workers.
... While there has been a discussion, primarily in social policy research, about the relationship between different types of welfare states (De Giorgi & Pellizzari, 2009;Sainsbury, 2006) and the provision of social protection for migrants, the debate on welfare state chauvinism has more recently gained momentum (Carmel & Sojka, 2021;Favell, 2016;Kymlicka, 2015). Schmitt and Teney (2019) argue that the differences between nation-state responses in terms of migrant access to social protection can be classified under two opposing theories: the theory of welfare state chauvinism and the theory of post-national approaches. ...
... Research has emphasised the presence of a clear North-South divide in terms of provisions for transnational social protection worldwide (Avato et al., 2010;Blauberger & Schmidt, 2014;Faist et al., 2015;Giulietti, 2014;Lafleur & Romero, 2018;Paul, 2017;Römer, 2017;Ruist, 2014;Serra Mingot & Mazzucato, 2019). While many bilateral agreements on social protection for migrants have been concluded Sabates-Wheeler et al., 2011;Sainsbury, 2006), the EU is usually referred to as the best-practice example in the seminal literature within diverse disciplines such as law, economics, and the social sciences (Blauberger & Schmidt, 2014;Carmel et al., 2011;De Giorgi & Pellizzari, 2009;Ferrera, 2016;Heindlmaier & Blauberger, 2017;Hjorth, 2016;Schmidt et al., 2018;Serra Mingot & Mazzucato, 2018). ...
It has been argued that nation‐states confront migrant protection with a highly diverse array of measures ranging from excluding strategies (often labelled as “welfare chauvinism”) to more inclusionary, post‐national approaches. While exclusionary strategies are often guided by nativist principles such as citizenship, post‐national approaches of social protection are usually based on residence. Building on an international comparative project with a focus on free movement within the European Union, and involving four pairs of EU member states, this article argues that the extremes of these two ways of understanding nation‐state approaches to migrant social protection are not mutually exclusive, as has been discussed so far, but, instead, are intertwined with one another. While there is a common (and globally unique) framework on the EU level for the coordination of mobile citizens’ social protection, EU member states determine their strategies using residence as a main tool to govern intra‐EU migration. We differentiate between three main intertwining strategies applied by nation‐states in this respect: generally, selectively, and purposefully gated access to social protection. All three potentially lead to the social exclusion of migrants, particularly those who cannot prove their residence status in line with institutional regulations due to their undocumented living situations or their transnational lifestyles.
... For example, in the UK, access to most social security benefits and tax credits including child benefits or child tax creditsis limited to those EEA migrants with the 'right to reside'; in Belgium, control on welfare use has effectively turned into an instrument with which the Belgian authorities intend to keep undesirable EU migrants out (Lafleur and Stanek 2017a). In addition, in 2014, the German government announced the adoption of 'New rules to fight "EU benefit tourism"', implying that EU migrants would no longer be entitled to social welfare benefits after six months of unemployment. 1 In the EU context, Central and Eastern European migrants are the classical focus of the literature on the links between welfare systems and migration (see, inter alia, De Giorgi and Pellizzari 2009;Kahanec and Zimmermann 2010;Kureková 2013); in the public opinion and among policy-makers much less attention has been paid to other European migrants (Barbulescu 2017). Nevertheless, the Southern European countries of Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy were deeply affected by the 2008 global economic crisis and/or subsequent austerity measures; for some time they have had the highest unemployment rates, which is generally considered a major trigger for migration. ...
... The studies generally rely on macro-level indicatorssuch as government spending on welfare and migration flows and present mixed findings (see e.g. De Giorgi and Pellizzari 2009;Giulietti 2014), 'which suggests that the role of welfare systems in intra-European migration decisions might be more complex than has been theorised so far' (de Jong andde Valk 2020: 1776). By relying on micro-level qualitative research, this paper aims to advance these debates by probing deeper into how individuals perceive welfare systems and by grasping which aspects of the welfare state they potentially take into account when making migration decisions. ...
The welfare aspects of intra-European migration remain an important and controversial topic of academic and political debates. These discussions touch upon the classical 'welfare magnet' or 'welfare tourism' hypothesis. Transcending the politicised concept of 'benefit tourism', our paper examines how welfare-state considerations in relation to migration decisions vary across the life course. Relying on micro-level qualitative research focus-ing on Spanish intra-EU movers, the paper probes deeper into how individuals perceive welfare systems, analysing the subtle and nuanced meanings of different aspects of the welfare for their migration decisions. We focus more specifically on welfare provisions in terms of health care, compulsory education, child support and other care responsibilities, unemployment and pensions and retirement. Our research indicates that, in studies on the migration-welfare nexus, it is necessary to move beyond the current narrow focus on the welfare magnet hypothesis and to examine how diverse welfare arrangements continuously and dynamically set the context for migration decisions at various stages of an individual's life. The results of our research show how features of the Spanish welfare system, in comparison to those of potential destination countries, might act as both a trigger and/or a barrier to migration. As such, we get a 'thicker description' of the role which welfare might play in shaping individuals' eventual migratory aspirations and decisions.
... Seminal work by Sjaastad (1962) and Harris and Todaro (1970) argued that migration preferences were a direct function of wage differentials between origin and destination countries. Subsequent arguments have extended this perspective to explain migration's observed inelasticity to changes in wage differentials by noting that employment gradients must also account for household-level considerations, labor market conditions within the origin country, and insurance and credit market failures (Stark and Bloom 1985;Taylor 1987;De Giorgi and Pellizzari 2009;Geis, Uebelmesser, and Werding 2013). The resulting synthesis, termed the "new economics of labor migration," remains arguably the dominant approach for explaining variation in immigrant destinations within scholarly and public accounts (Abreu 2012). ...
... In particular, Borjas (1999) assessed data on migratory flows within the United States to argue that immigrants seek destinations with generous welfare programs. In Europe, studies have similarly suggested that generous welfare provisions attract immigrants (Freeman 1986;Péridy 2006;Warin and Svaton 2008;De Giorgi and Pellizzari 2009). Yet the concept of "welfare migration" has also been highly contested. ...
Which national characteristics do voluntary migrants prioritize when considering destinations? Although this question is salient for policymakers, extant studies face challenges when seeking to identify how various pull factors shape destination preferences. Surveys of migrants are typically conducted after they arrive, introducing selection bias and post-hoc reasoning. Moreover, desirable national characteristics tend to co-vary, implying that observed relationships with migration flows may be confounded. In this article, we identify the destination preferences of prospective migrants by drawing on a sample of 8,500 respondents from five sending states across the Middle East and North Africa. Prospective migrants completed a series of conjoint survey tasks in which they chose between two destinations with randomly varying characteristics. The results reveal a clear hierarchy of preferences, with prospective migrants placing the greatest priority on liberal democratic governance and employment prospects. The availability of welfare benefits acted as a secondary consideration, while geographic distance and co-ethnic stock did not strongly predict initial destination preferences. While the rank order of these considerations remains consistent across national samples, our results suggest that respondents from different economic and political backgrounds vary in how they navigate potential tradeoffs between national characteristics. These findings address post-arrival bias in extant studies by revealing prospective migrants’ preferences before they interact with the opportunity structures that facilitate and restrict entry into desirable destinations.
... However, to identify the main drivers of migration, empirical studies often focus on individuals who actually migrated (Abraham, Auspurg, & Hinz, 2010;van Dalen & Henkens, 2012). Furthermore, many studies primarily seek to explain the size and direction of migration flows by means of characteristics of the destination country, while grouping individuals from fairly different origin countries together (De Giorgi & Pellizzari, 2009;Geis, Uebelmesser, & Werding, 2013;Giulietti, Guzi, Kahanec, & Zimmermann, 2013). ...
... Although the welfare magnet hypothesis has found support in the context of internal mobility within the United States (e.g., McKinnish, 2007;Southwick, 1981), results are more mixed for studies on international migration (e.g., De Giorgi & Pellizzari, 2009;Giulietti et al., 2013 Borjas (1999) emphasised the role of welfare provisions in the destination country, Massey (1998) argued that people are likely less motivated to emigrate when the welfare system in the origin country provides social security in the form of income support and healthcare. In other words, a generous welfare state in the origin country may act as a kind of risk insurance, which individuals are not ready to revoke by migrating to another country with lesser social protection (Fouarge & Ester, 2008). ...
With this comparative study, we aim for a better understanding of the role of the origin country in shaping migration aspirations. Using experimental data collected among a sample of Master students in Portugal and the Netherlands, we tested whether the impact of labour market and welfare state-related factors on migration aspirations varied between these two origin countries. In line with our expectation, potential gains of migration in terms of job opportunities and wages had a stronger positive impact on migration aspirations for the Portuguese as compared with the Dutch respondents. For Portugal and the Netherlands alike, migration aspirations were lower when the level of unemployment benefits in the destination country was lower than in the origin country. Our findings indicated that conditions in the origin country, as well as the individual's life stage, shape which characteristics of the destination country are most important for migration aspirations. K E Y W O R D S aspirations, experimental design, migration, origin country,
... Sen lisäksi, että työttömyysja muun sosiaaliturvan taso voi vaikuttaa työn vastaanottamisen kynnykseen ja sitä kautta työllisyyteen, sosiaaliturvalla saattaa olla merkityksiä muuttopäätöksiin. Empiiriset tutkimustulokset sosiaaliturvan tason ja maahanmuuton välisestä yhteydestä ovat kuitenkin ristiriitaisia (De Giorgi & Pellizzari 2009). Työvoi-ma-ja sosiaalipolitiikalla olisi pyrittävä entistä paremmin vaikuttamaan työnteon kannattavuuteen. ...
... Economists have assessed the causal effect of welfare state generosity on immigration levels and found mixed results (Agersnap, Jensen, and Kleven 2020;Giulietti et al. 2013). Overall, the scholarship suggests that the main drivers of migration are economic opportunities and family networks and not the prospect of welfare benefits (De Giorgi and Pellizzari 2009;Geis, Uebelmesser, and Werding 2013). While migration tends to fluctuate with the business cycle, its fiscal impact also depends on the degree to which immigrants serve as a buffer whereby unemployment is exported in economically bad times (Afonso 2005). ...
Migration and its consequences for the legitimacy of the welfare state have been the subject of a number of controversial discussions over the past several decades, and remain highly salient issues today. To be legitimate, welfare states need to function well and to deliver what is expected of them (“output-legitimacy”), but they also need to do so in a way that conforms with popular sentiments (“input-legitimacy”). Migration is likely to affect both dimensions of legitimacy. This chapter reviews the existing research on the relationship between migration and the welfare state and maps how international mobility and ethnic diversity interact with contemporary welfare states. In particular, we focus on the tension between the economic and fiscal rationale for more migration and the socio-political rationale for less migration, and spell out the conflicting policy imperatives and difficult tradeoffs involved. A central theme here is that welfare states often need migration to remain fiscally sustainable and to maintain their redistributive capacity, but migration may simultaneously undermine the political sustainability of inclusive welfare states. We also discuss a number of potential remedies to this tension, drawing, inter alia, on insights from research on prejudice and discrimination in social psychology.
... Assuming an effect on migration, we introduce data on the unemployment rate, GINI coefficient and the ratio of the 20-39-year-old age group to the total population in the sending countries as control explanatory variables. These variables proved to be important drivers of migration in several studies (e.g., Alvarez-Plata et al. 2003;Mayda 2010;Ortega -Peri 2009;De Giorgi -Pellizzari 2009). All of these data are retrieved from Eurostat. ...
Since the eastern enlargement of the European Union (EU), the movement from east to west has become the main driver of intra-EU mobility. Recently, the free movement of labour has been contested not only in the debates around Brexit, but also in other receiving countries. It is not on the political agenda, but several studies have highlighted the economic and demographic effects of massive emigration in eastern EU Member States. More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the functioning of free movement. Economic integration theory assumes that migration continues until wages are equalized in the receiving and sending countries. This paper analyses the perception of intra-EU mobility in the literature and empirically tests whether there is a relationship between the dynamism of income growth in the receiving (Germany, Austria and Spain) and sending (Central and Eastern European) countries, and the dynamism of migration. The empirical results do not support the neoclassical assumption that an equalization mechanism can function, even in the long run. To cope with recent challenges, this paper argues that free movement should not be considered as an element of a spontaneous market mechanism, but as an economic-political product, based on a constitutional order.
... The literature on welfare-benefits-induced migration (e.g. Kennan and Walker 2010;De Giorgi and Pellizzari 2009) documents that welfare access provides weak incentives to geographical mobility. Still, this literature has focused on mobility across areas considerably larger than municipalities. ...
We study the use of social expenditures and regulation for redistribution. When regulated goods are essential in the consumption bundle of the poor, a high poverty rate creates incentives to increase redistribution through regulation. By contrast, inequality directs redistribution towards social expenditures. We propose a theoretical model that captures the trade-off between these two redistributive policies and test the model implications with a novel municipality dataset on income and local government policies. Theory predicts and empirical evidence supports that failing to account for poverty biases the effect of inequality on redistribution. Our evidence also reflects the positive connection between poverty and the use of regulation for redistribution.
... Borjas (1999) shows that generous welfare programmes offered by many US states have become a magnet for immigrants. Concerning the EU-15 countries, which also represent the focus of our empirical analysis, De Giorgi and Pellizzari (2009) estimate the extent to which welfare generosity affects the location decisions of migrants. The conclusions are that these welfare magnets are positive but relatively weak, compared to the role of labour market conditions, such as the unemployment rate and the level of wages. ...
Our empirical analysis focuses on the effect of regional policies on migration attraction factors in Europe. We employ a regression discontinuity design to assess the causal relationship between the reception of large amounts of public funds and migration flows in the EU‐15 regions. In highly‐subsidised regions, we find a large increase in the share of foreign citizens from less‐developed countries when compared to low‐subsidised regions with similar pre‐treatment characteristics. The analysis shows that such an increase is due to the positive impact of the European regional policy on job market opportunities as well as the improvement of public goods supply.
... Evidence indicates that many individuals immigrate for economic benefit (Cohen et al., 2009;Nannestaed, 2007;De Giorgi and Pellizzari, 2009;Heitmueller, 2005). These individuals do not necessarily come from a dire/desperate situation; the largest number of immigrant entrepreneurs in the United States actually immigrate from other mature economies (Ovelere and Belton, 2012). ...
Although scholars often argue that entrepreneurship can be life-changing, they increasingly recognize that entrepreneurship centered on helping people overcome dire conditions merits specific investigation. Such entrepreneurship to overcome dire/desperate conditions in mature economies is commonly referred to as transitional entrepreneurship. We establish the boundaries of this unique form of entrepreneurship by examining the prior studies that have looked at such transitions in mature economies. We further build on our insights by looking at specific cases of transitional entrepreneurship. Finally, we lay out a research agenda that will help build the foundation of understanding of transitional entrepreneurship.
... Literature on international migration has frequently mentioned the welfare state as one of the factors influencing migration decisions (e.g., Beine et al., 2011;De Giorgi & Pellizzari, 2009;Giulietti & Wahba, 2012). Just like higher wages, migration scholars primarily expected generous welfare systems abroad to attract migrants, also known as the 'welfare magnet hypothesis' (e.g., Borjas, 1999). ...
The welfare state can be perceived as a safety net which helps individuals adjust to situations of risk or transition. Starting from this idea of the welfare state as safety net, this study addresses whether and how welfare generosity may influence people’s willingness to migrate. In doing so, we distinguish between two potential mechanisms, innovatively focusing on welfare provisions in both the country of origin and destination. First, a generous welfare system in the country of origin may have a retaining impact, as individuals may be unwilling to migrate to countries offering less social protection. Second, generous welfare provisions in the country of destination may enable migration for individuals who are more intolerant of uncertainty and who otherwise would prefer to remain immobile. We test both mechanisms using stated preference data collected with a unique experimental design among over 300 Dutch Master students. Confirming the first mechanism, we indeed find that respondents report a lower willingness to migrate when evaluating hypothetical scenarios where the level of social protection was higher in the country of origin as compared with the country of destination. Furthermore, and in line with the second mechanism, individuals who are more intolerant of uncertainty generally report a lower willingness to migrate, yet their willingness to migrate increases for scenarios with higher levels of unemployment benefits. Our findings, thus, indeed suggest that welfare arrangements are mainly serving a safety net function and need to be understood in relative terms between the country of origin and destination.
... In contrast, other studies (Giulietti, Guzi, Kahanec, & Zimmermann, 2013) point out the lack of empirical evidence that would attest to this idea. The predominant academic stance (De Giorgi & Pellizzari, 2009;Warin & Svaton, 2008) does not refute the existence of a certain magnet effect, although it minimises and relativises the intensity of this effect in relation to other variables, chiefly those related with the attraction of the different economic sectors (Oliver, 2006) and those that affect people's life cycles (De Haas, 2011). This latter position emphasises the integrative and proactive nature of public welfare policies as tools that produce social normalisation (Rodríguez Cabrero, 2003). ...
The problematisation of migration has intensified in Europe over the last decade, as the Financial Crisis of 2008 dealt a major blow to social welfare instruments. This context has reinforced the idea that immigrants would consume a disproportionate share of socio-economic resources available through social services, thus displacing the local population. This article examines the case of Spain, analysing the dynamics of accessing socioeconomic inclusion policies developed by public Social Services among immigrants and non-immigrants at risk of social exclusion, based on different secondary sources. The paper shows that is there no evidence that social services resources are being displaced for the socio-economic inclusion of the immigrant population.
... Over the past decade, public and scientific concerns have been raised about how open borders and extended welfare rights of migrants will place a burden on more generous welfare systems within the enlarged EU (e.g., De Giorgi and Pellizzari, 2009;Greve, 2014). Our study contributes to this debate by empirically investigating the migration patterns and welfare uptake of migrants from Poland and Bulgaria after joining the EU (in 2004 and 2007, respectively) using the Netherlands as a case study. ...
There is much debate on the sustainability of (generous) welfare systems in the context of freedom of movement within the European Union (EU), often assuming that migrants’ welfare access is only regulated by national borders. In this chapter the authors analyse how and to what extent this assumption is accurate. They use large-scale population data from the Netherlands as a case study for analysing the migration patterns and labour market status of Polish and Bulgarian migrants after these countries joined the EU. Their findings do not support the political and scientific discourse that pressures on generous welfare systems increased due to the 2004 and 2007 EU enlargements. In practice, individuals’ welfare access in the context of free mobility of EU migrants is largely determined by national eligibility criteria tied to their lifecourse stage, labour market status and length of stay in the country. The authors’ findings point to the importance of including lifecourse characteristics for the study of migration and the welfare state.
... One of the main considerations for policy makers and public opinions alike is whether migrants contribute their "fair" share to their host country tax and welfare system. Fears of welfare abuses are common among European citizens (Boeri, 2010) together with worries that the European welfare systems might act as a magnet for welfare-dependent migrants (De Giorgi and Pellizzari, 2009). These concerns are so deep that they outshine even worries about labour market effects of immigration in public opinion's assessment (Dustmann and Preston, 2007) and are hard to ignore for governments. ...
... NE and NELM find their way into 'welfare magnet' theories as well (Borjas, 1999;De Giorgi & Pellizzari, 2009), which argue that by calculating wealth-maximisation, migrants are driven towards generous welfare states. These assumptions, however, cannot explain the multilayered strategies involved in life-renewal and have been subjected to multiple forms of criticism. ...
The article develops the notion of restless bodies to explore the interaction between regimes of social reproduction and freedom of movement. The notion captures the methodological difficulty to account for ‘return migration’ and goes beyond the isolation of a singular migration determinant. The author relies on two empirical cases. The first draws on one hundred interviews with ‘return migrants’ in Bulgaria. The second is based on fieldwork conducted between 2013 and 2015 in Germany. Both show how the political economy of movement is characterised by a contradiction between fixity and motion in the context of capital accumulation and fading welfare state. The concerns at hand are raised both because of their methodological importance but also as a potential instrument that could supplement ongoing policy debates in the field of EU social security portability coordination.
... Finally, conditions of access/entry to destination countries regulating the observed migration flows are found to be important determinants: Bertoli and Moraga (2013) look at the role of bilateral immigration policies and show that the introduction of a travel visa requirement reduces direct bilateral flows by 40% to 47%. 1 The role of the institutional setting at origin and destination in shaping migration flows has so far been addressed in rather general terms (see Baudassé et al. 2018 for a recent review of the link between immigration and institutions). Existing studies focus on the impact of broad institutional indicators such as economic freedom (Ashby 2010, Nejad andYoung 2016), the quality of governance (Ariu et al. 2016, Bergh et al. 2015 and the generosity of the welfare system (De Giorgi andPellizzari 2009, Pedersen et al. 2008) on observed migration flows. Moreover, labour market institutions such as employment protection Moullan 2012, Geis et al. 2013), trade union density and power (Cigagna andSulis 2015, Migali 2018) and minimum wages (Cigagna andSulis 2015, Giulietti 2014) have been considered as potential determinants of location choice. ...
This paper analyzes how countries’ provision of migrant rights affects potential migrants’ destination choice. Combining data on bilateral migration desires from over 140 origin countries and data on migrant rights in 38 mainly OECD destination countries over the period 2007–2014, we find that potential migrants tend to favour destinations that are more open to the inclusion of immigrants into their society. In particular, better access to and conditions on the labour market as well as access to nationality and to permanent residency significantly increase the perceived attractiveness of a destination country. These results are robust across different specifications and hold for subsamples of origin countries as well as of destinations. Moreover, some results vary across types of respondents. Educational opportunities for migrants, for instance, affect the migration desires of individuals aged 15 to 24 years, but less so of individuals in other age groups.
Résumé
Les migrants potentiels internalisent‐ils les droits des migrants en vigueur dans les pays d’accueil de l’OCDE ? Cet article étudie comment la disposition de droits pour les migrants dans les pays affecte le choix de destination formé par les migrants potentiels. En combinant des données sur les intentions de migration bilatérale à partir de 140 pays d’origine avec des données relatives aux droits des migrants dans 38 pays principalement de l’OCDE pour la période 2007‐2014, nous montrons que les migrants potentiels préfèrent des destinations qui sont plus ouvertes à l’intégration des immigrants dans leur société. Plus spécifiquement, un meilleur accès aux conditions du marché du travail ainsi que l’accès à la nationalité et à la résidence permanente augmentent de manière significative l’attractivité perc¸ue d’un pays de destination. Ces résultats sont robustes parmi plusieurs spécifications et sont valables sur des sous‐échantillons de pays d’origine et de destination. En outre, certains résultats varient par type de répondants. Ainsi, les possibilités en matière d’éducation affectent les intentions de migrations des individus âgés entre 15 et 24 ans, mais affectent moins celles des individus des autres groupes d’âge.
... First, it follows from theoretical models that generous welfare systems can create migration incentives for persons with particular characteristics and thus contribute to selectivity of migration (Borjas, 1999;Razin & Wahba, 2015). Second, welfare systems at the destination can create incentives or disincentives in terms of labour market participation and thus hamper integration process (Blauberger & Schmidt, 2014;Brochmann & Hagelund, 2011;De Giorgi & Pellizzari, 2009;Koopmans, 2010). Recent studies show that discussion on the relationship between migration and welfare is extremely complex and immensely stereotyped (Kaczmarczyk & Rapaport, 2014). ...
The main aim of this paper is to critically assess prevalent conceptualisations of the notion of economic integration to set out a research framework capable of structuring empirical research on economic integration, with a particular focus on the New Immigrant Destinations. To overcome the difficulties identified in the literature, we propose a new broad conceptual model of integration. We postulate that an analysis of economic integration outcomes (effects) should consider aspirations and capabilities of a given individual and include other than economic dimensions of immigrants’ participation in receiving societies. Importantly, we treat aspirations and capabilities as useful concepts not only in understanding one’s migratory behaviour (including immobility) but also in explaining and interpreting integration outcomes. In our approach, we go beyond traditional analysis of integration that focuses on settlement migrants and propose a scheme that allows for understanding of economic integration of various categories of immigrants.
... Evidence from the USA suggests that welfare benefit generosity affects the locational choice of immigrants across states (Borjas 1999;McKinnish, 2005). The size and skill composition of migrant flows to and within Europe respond to differences in the host countries' welfare state generosity, but the effects of generosity appear to be small when compared with the effects of labor demand conditions (Pedersen et al. 2008;De Giorgi and Pellizzari 2009;Razin and Wahba 2014). find no relationship between spending on unemployment benefits (as a percentage of GDP) in EU countries and immigration from non-EU countries. ...
The common European labor market enhances allocative efficiency, but certain institutional features may also trigger inefficient migration. As a job in a high-income country entails generous welfare and social insurance entitlements, migrants’ reservation wages may lie below their opportunity cost of labor. We show that this gives rise to an externality when employers and migrant workers can pass some of their remuneration costs onto taxpayers. Once welfare benefit entitlement is secured, the reservation wage of the migrant rises, giving the firm an incentive to replace the worker with a similar migrant willing to accept lower pay. This leads to excess churn—a reallocation of labor within firms that simultaneously involves a flow of employees to unemployment benefits and the hiring of similar workers. Based on Norwegian data, we present evidence of high excess churn rates in firms with many workers from the new EU member states.
... Welfare is another crucial factor in the settlement of migrants. 'Welfare migration' refers to the phenomenon of migration to places with more generous welfare benefits (Blank, 1988;Borjas, 1999;De Giorgi and Pellizzari, 2009;Levine and Zimmerman, 1999;McKinnish, 2005McKinnish, , 2007Sabates-Wheeler and Feldman, 2011;Sinn, 2004). This phenomenon has been observed in places such as the EU, the US and Australia, among both natives and immigrants. ...
The welfare system can be a crucial factor in the urban settlement of rural migrants, but its effects are difficult to determine because to do so one must distinguish the effect of welfare entitlement from the effect of ‘migrant selectivity bias’, which widely exists in cities in developing countries. Using survey data from 15 Chinese cities, this study examines the ways in which social insurance – the most critical social welfare package in China – affects rural migrants’ urban-settlement intentions. The results show that there is a ‘migrant selectivity bias’ in Chinese cities, that is, rural migrants who are better off socio-economically are more inclined to participate in social insurance and are more inclined to pursue permanent urban settlement. Meanwhile, social insurance participation is significantly and positively related to rural migrants’ urban-settlement intentions, and this positive relation remains even after we discount the effect of ‘migrant selectivity bias’ in the analysis. We argue that, for rural migrants in China, the effect of social insurance participation on urban settlement intentions closely resembles that experienced by those who move to migration-managed regimes. We conclude that the Chinese government should establish a more inclusive social welfare system to enable rural migrants to permanently settle in cities.
... Yet, the generosity of the welfare system and the availability of social benefits can also act as a magnet, particularly for low-skilled immigrants who are the net beneficiaries rather than net contributors to the welfare state (Razin and Wahba, 2015). Generous welfare programs may attract people who otherwise would not have migrated to a particular country, and thus can shape the migration location choices (Borjas, 1999;De Giorgi and Pellizzari, 2009;Razin and Wahba, 2015;Agersnap et al., 2020). As left-wing governments tend to favour a generous welfare state, they are more likely to allocate resources to welfare-related policies and push for increased social spending than right-wing governments, in line with the interests and preferences of their core political constituencies (Bove et al., 2017). ...
We provide the first empirical evidence that differences in government ideology play an important role in the choice of cross-border migration destinations. In absence of first-hand experience, immigrants rely on information about the political landscape of the origin and host countries to form expectations about the context of reception in the host society. We use data on bilateral migration and government ideology for 36 OECD countries between 1990 and 2016. Our analysis shows that bilateral migration flows are higher when the government at the destination is more left-wing than the government at the origin, especially when we consider proximate countries.
... Finally, conditions of access/entry to destination countries regulating the observed migration flows are found to be important determinants: Bertoli and Moraga (2013) look at the role of bilateral immigration policies and show that the introduction of a travel visa requirement reduces direct bilateral flows by 40% to 47%. 1 The role of the institutional setting at origin and destination in shaping migration flows has so far been addressed in rather general terms (see Baudassé et al. 2018 for a recent review of the link between immigration and institutions). Existing studies focus on the impact of broad institutional indicators such as economic freedom (Ashby 2010, Nejad andYoung 2016), the quality of governance (Ariu et al. 2016, Bergh et al. 2015 and the generosity of the welfare system (De Giorgi andPellizzari 2009, Pedersen et al. 2008) on observed migration flows. Moreover, labour market institutions such as employment protection Moullan 2012, Geis et al. 2013), trade union density and power (Cigagna andSulis 2015, Migali 2018) and minimum wages (Cigagna andSulis 2015, Giulietti 2014) have been considered as potential determinants of location choice. ...
This paper analyzes how countries’ provision of migrant rights affects potential migrants’ destination choice. Combining data on bilateral migration desires from over 140 origin countries and data on migrant rights in 38 mainly OECD destination countries over the period 2007–2014, we find that potential migrants tend to favour destinations that are more open to the inclusion of immigrants into their society. In particular, better access to and conditions on the labour market as well as access to nationality and to permanent residency significantly increase the perceived attractiveness of a destination country. These results are robust across different specifications and hold for subsamples of origin countries as well as of destinations. Moreover, some results vary across types of respondents. Educational opportunities for migrants, for instance, affect the migration desires of individuals aged 15 to 24, but less so of individuals in other age groups.
Access to social welfare has been downplayed in understanding migrants’ decisions about destinations and settlements. Moreover, how migrants’ latent mobility preferences affect their preferences for migration drivers remains underexplored. This study uses latent class logit models to identify three types of internal migrants with distinctive latent mobility preferences in China. The findings suggest that access to social welfare is the most important predictor of decisions about destination cities for all types of migrants, particularly those with low mobility preference. For highly mobile migrants, access to social welfare is an important consideration but expected wages and urban amenities also play important roles in their location choices and settlement. The findings highlight the crucial role of social welfare in the relocation and settlement of internal migrants in China. The heterogeneous preferences regarding migration drivers among migrants with different latent mobility preferences also call for tailor-made local labor policymaking.
The welfare magnet hypothesis holds that immigrants are likely to relocate to regions with generous welfare benefits. Although this assumption has motivated extensive reforms to immigration policy and social programs, the empirical evidence remains contested. In this study, we assess detailed administrative records from Switzerland covering the full population of social assistance recipients between 2005 and 2015. By leveraging local variations in cash transfers and exogenous shocks to benefit levels, we identify how benefits shape intracountry residential decisions. We find limited evidence that immigrants systematically move to localities with higher benefits. The lack of significant welfare migration within a context characterized by high variance in benefits and low barriers to movement suggests that the prevalence of this phenomenon may be overstated. These findings have important implications in the European setting where subnational governments often possess discretion over welfare and parties frequently mobilize voters around the issue of “benefit tourism.”
The increasing flow of immigrants into Europe over the last decade has generated a range of considerations in the policy agenda of many receiving countries. One of the main considerations for policymakers and public opinion alike is whether immigrants contribute their ‘fair’ share to their host country's tax and welfare system. In this paper, we assess the net fiscal impact of intra‐EU and extra‐EU migration in 27 European Union (EU) Member States. We find that migrants in the EU, on average, contribute more than natives to welfare states. However, when we take an age‐specific life‐cycle perspective, we find that natives generally show a higher net fiscal contribution than both groups of migrants. Among migrants, extra‐EU migrants contribute less than intra‐EU migrants. We then use a demographic microsimulation model to project the potential net fiscal impact of migration in the EU into the future. We show that despite the fact that intra‐EU migration contributes to reduce the strong negative impact of population ageing, its contribution is not sufficient to offset the negative fiscal consequences.
It is twenty years since the beginning in Spain of an immigration cycle without precedent in the international migration scenario. After receiving more than 6 million new citizens continuously throughout a cycle of growth, crisis and economic recovery, the article makes an exhaustive analysis of the connection between immigration and the public economy in Spain. It analyses in detail the empirical evidence which makes it possible to disprove the usual prejudices, myths and misperceptions about immigration and the public economy. The analysis of a specific context such as that of Spain allows for a detailed quantification of the non-specific and aggregated findings shown in the literature on immigration and the public economy. The article shows evidence that refutes the so-called welfare magnet, accurately reveals the scant impact of immigration on public spending, quantifies the essential contribution to tax collection and rejects its negative net fiscal impact.
The post presents the perspective of Roma originally living in Slovakia in excluded communities in underdeveloped regions relocated to the UK for work and better living conditions. The aim is to compare their experience of finding a job in Slovakia and subsequently in the UK. We compare experiences, assistance services or other available options available to jobseekers in both countries. Most of the participants in the research have a negative experience of access and treatment at various institutions in Slovakia. In the UK, on the other hand, not a single respondent had such an experience, although the country's entire exit campaign from the European Union was in the spirit of increased control of migrants. Discrimination or anti-Roma sentiments across Europe are not the only reason why the Roma have also chosen UK as their new homeland. The interviews we conducted as part of our research showed that the biggest motivation is the abundance and availability of job opportunities related to better living conditions. In the paper, we will also look at the hypothesis of the magnet of well-being, the theory saying that migration decisions are made based on the generosity of social benefits in the country to which they migrate.
Keywords:
Roma, Labor migration; Stereotypes, abuse of the social system; Barriers in the labor market; The theroy of the magnet of well-being
It has been argued that nation‐states confront migrant protection with a highly diverse array of measures ranging from excluding strategies (often labelled as “welfare chauvinism”) to more inclusionary, post‐national approaches. While exclusionary strategies are often guided by nativist principles such as citizenship, post‐national approaches of social protection are usually based on residence. Building on an international comparative project with a focus on free movement within the European Union, and involving four pairs of EU member states, this article argues that the extremes of these two ways of understanding nation‐state approaches to migrant social protection are not mutually exclusive, as has been discussed so far, but, instead, are intertwined with one another. While there is a common (and globally unique) framework on the EU level for the coordination of mobile citizens’ social protection, EU member states determine their strategies using residence as a main tool to govern intra‐EU migration. We differentiate between three main intertwining strategies applied by nation‐states in this respect: generally, selectively, and purposefully gated access to social protection. All three potentially lead to the social exclusion of migrants, particularly those who cannot prove their residence status in line with institutional regulations due to their undocumented living situations or their transnational lifestyles.
Introduction
According to the ‘welfare magnet theory’, generous welfare states are said to be negatively affected by immigration, as migrants may be attracted by high welfare benefits or services. In a nutshell: the higher the benefits are, ceteris paribus, the higher the number of (unskilled) immigrants entering the country (Borjas, 1999). In fact the dominant interpretative pattern within the political discourse leading up to the Brexit referendum was that European Union (EU) migrant citizens were attracted to the UK by its relatively generous welfare benefits and services. Prime Minister David Cameron in 2014 claimed:
‘Someone coming to the UK from elsewhere in Europe, who's employed on the medium wage and who has 2 children back in their home country, they today will receive around £700 per month in benefits in the UK. That is more than twice what they’d receive in Germany, and 3 times more than they would receive in France. No wonder so many people want to come to Britain.’ (Cameron, 2014)
However, empirical evidence on the impact of welfare state generosity on migration flows within the EU is rather mixed. De Giorgi and Pellizzari (2009) find weak evidence for welfare magnets, while others reject the magnet hypothesis and argue that labour market opportunities and networks largely determine migration flows (Giulietti and Wahba 2012; Zimmermann et al, 2012; Giulietti et al, 2013; Skupnik 2014). The suggestion that EU migrant citizens will create a smaller net benefit (or larger net cost) in countries with tax-financed benefits, such as the UK, than in countries with predominantly insurance-based welfare states (Ruhs 2015) is also far from clear, as the financing structure is not necessarily a robust indicator for the ease of access and the level of social rights available to EU migrant citizens (Bruzelius et al, 2016). Benefits important to working-age EU migrant citizens, such as Child Benefit, Housing Allowance and in-work benefits, are largely tax financed independently of the overall financing structure of the welfare state. Research by Dustmann and Frattini (2014) found that the migration of EU citizens to the UK provides a clear economic benefit, as the average fiscal contribution of EU migrant citizens is higher than among British nationals.
Many health insurance programs contain certain portability constraints. It is common that enrollees are eligible for greater reimbursement when they received services at selected local facilities. We investigate the impact of this portability constraint on residents' choice of job location. Using a unique, nationwide survey data set in China, we find that provision of health insurance decreases the probability of working in non-local regions for the rural residents by 2.4%. The results are mainly driven by the residence lock-in effect. That is, the insurance program discourages rural residents from working outside their registered areas of residence and, especially, in other provinces. The pullback effect, that is, the effect of the health insurance program attracting migrant workers who had worked outside back to regions close to their hometowns, is not found to be significant.
Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine the empirical links between social housing policy and location choices of immigrants in France.Design/methodology/approach – The study characterizes the main individual and contextual determinants of the probability of immigrants to live in a HLM (habitations à loyer modéré), which is the main public housing policy in France. The authors use individual information coming from large (one-fourth) extracts of the French population censuses conducted by INSEE (Paris) in 1982, 1990, and 1999.Findings – In general, migrants live more frequently in social housing than French natives, other observables being equal. In particular, this frequency is higher for migrants from Turkey, Morocco, Southeast Asia, Algeria, Tunisia and Sub-Saharan Africa (in decreasing order). Moreover, migrants of all origins live less often in a HLM when the city has plenty of social housing and when the fraction of natives is high.Research limitations/implications – The dataset can only measure statistical association between location choices of immigrants and the supply of social housing units at the local level, in the absence of panel data and instrumental variables. Interpretation in terms of causality is thus not permitted.Originality/value – The dataset used is especially valuable for studying location choices of immigrants, since it allows significant samples of immigrants, according to their country of origin, these groups being generally too small in (French) surveys.
Welfare provision as a border control strategy is often discussed in relation to irregular migrants and refugees. However, this article focuses on EU migrants. Using discourse theory, it explores interviews with policy experts from four migrant-receiving EU countries. The aim is to identify policy discourses on deservingness articulated in relation to intra-EU migrants from four member states in Eastern Europe, to detect mechanisms that generate these discourses and to reveal how they relate to welfare chauvinism. The article uncovers contesting logics that move policy experts toward welfare-chauvinist assumptions, which might contribute to the discursive welfare exclusion of EU migrants.
We analyze the effects of governmental redistribution on migration patterns, using registry data that includes almost the universe of Italian citizens living abroad. Since Italy takes a middle ground in terms of redistribution, both the welfare-magnet effect and the propensity of high-skilled to settle in countries with lower taxes can be studied. Our findings confirm that destination countries with more redistribution receive a negative selection of Italian migrants. Policy simulations are run in order to gauge the magnitude of these effects. We find that sizable increases in redistribution in Italy have small effects on the skill composition of the resident population.
This open access book explores the role of family, public, market and third sector welfare provision for individual and households’ decisions regarding geographical mobility. It challenges the state-centred approach in research on welfare and migration by emphasising migrants’ own reflections and experiences. It asks whether and in which ways different welfare concerns are part of migrants’ decisions regarding (or aspirations for) mobility. Employing a transnational and a translocal perspective, the book addresses different forms of geographical mobility, such as immigration, emigration, and re-migration, circular and return migration. By bringing in empirical findings from across a variety of Western and non-Western contexts, the book challenges the Eurocentric focus in current debates and contributes to a more nuanced and more integrated global account of the welfare-migration nexus.
In our chapter we take the concept of agency and apply it to migrants’ search for a safe present and a good future for their children, who face the global challenges of living in a risk society. Our analysis draws on biographical, semi-structured interviews conducted with Polish migrants living in the capital area of Norway. The findings of our research show that, although the labour market and good living conditions are important for Polish migrants while taking migration decisions, it is their children’s education that frequently transforms a temporary stay into a permanent one. We argue that Polish migrant parents adopt the strategy of ‘purchasing’ education, which they consider to be more beneficial due to the principles and values of the Norwegian welfare state (especially equality and educational support). In our research we found that the interviewees consider a Norwegian education as a ‘currency’, a credential in the sense that it will give their children access to further studies and/or better jobs. We focus on the migrant strategies, which often take the character of ‘escaping forward’ in an attempt to increase the life chances of their children.
This research uses a normative approach to examine the relationship between basic income and migration. The decisive variable is the effect of labour automation, which increases economic insecurities globally, leaving some nation states in a position to cope with this and others not. The insecurities will increase migratory pressures on one hand but also justify the introduction of basic income on a nation state level on the other.
The normative guideline is the republican conception of freedom as non-domination. This is used to justify a basic income, analyse how labour automation creates dominating structures and how borders dominate migrants seeking to move to countries which introduce a basic income.
The result is that nation states that introduce a basic income to counter internal domination through labour automation, also have to look outside of their nation state. The imposition of borders in order to keep a basic income sustainable as well as labour automation itself, establish a form of domination over less developed countries and thus demand international regulation.
We study the effects of welfare generosity on international migration using reforms of immigrant welfare benefits in Denmark. The first reform, implemented in 2002, lowered benefits for non-EU immigrants by about 50 percent, with no changes for natives or EU immigrants. The policy was later repealed and reintroduced. Based on a quasi-experimental research design, we find sizable effects: the benefit reduction reduced the net flow of immigrants by about 5,000 people per year, and the subsequent repeal of the policy reversed the effect almost exactly. The implied elasticity of migration with respect to benefits equals 1.3. This represents some of the first causal evidence on the welfare magnet hypothesis. (JEL F22, H53, I38, J15)
Providing health insurance with certain geographical restrictions may lead to misallocations in the labour market by hindering migration. This paper tests whether the rural health insurance first introduced in 2003, the New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS), had unintended and negative effects on rural-to-urban migration mobility in China. The NCMS offers health insurance only to people with rural household registration, and they can benefit from the NCMS only when visiting the hospitals near their registered location in the household registration system. An event-study approach to a new dataset collected from provincial yearbooks in China reveals at the county level that the NCMS reduces the percentage and rate of growth of the percentage of rural residents who are rural-to-urban migrants and who work outside their home county. Using the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), my instrumental variable (IV) results show that being enrolled in the NCMS reduces the probability of individual-level migrating. The IV is a time-variant dummy indicating the counties that have relative early NCMS implementations. I also use the CHNS to construct a county-level dataset and replicate the county-level results. Together, the results suggest that the NCMS “locks” the rural labour force into rural areas and further hinders geographical job mobility in China.
Are cross-border workers responsive to changes in the exchange rate between the home and host countries’ currencies? I answer this question by examining the effects of the appreciation of the Swiss franc (CHF) relative to the euro (EUR) on labour supply decisions of Italian cross-border workers. I use hourly data on traffic flows in Ticino, the southernmost canton of Switzerland, together with three additional datasets (the Cross-border Commuter Statistics, the Swiss Earnings Structure Survey, and Google trend data). The results show that a 10% appreciation in the CHF increases the number of cars along the Swiss–Italian border by 1.6–2.7% more than in the rest of the canton. This effect is found only during specific time intervals, which differ according to the direction of traffic flow; specifically, from Italy to Switzerland in early morning, from Switzerland to Italy in the afternoon, and in both directions in late morning. Moreover, when the CHF is stronger, more people from Italy look for jobs in Ticino, and the number of cross-border workers increases in municipalities within a driving distance of up to 10 km from the border. Finally, additional evidence suggests that cross-border workers also react to the appreciation by increasing their number of hours worked.
Abstrak: Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mendeskripsikan pengaruh remitan, jiwa entrepreneurship, dan kemapanan bekerja pasca menjadi TKI baik secara parsial maupun simultan terhadap tingkat kesejahteraan Tenaga Kerja Indonesia (TKI) purna. Pendekatan yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini yaitu penelitian kuantitatif. Metode pengambilan data secara survei. Sampel penelitian berjumlah 240 orang TKI purna. Data yang telah terkumpul dianalisis dengan analisis univariate, bivariate, dan multivariate. Hasil analisis menunjukkan bahwa: ada pengaruh yang positif dan signifikan antara jumlah remitan, jiwa kewirausahaan, dan kemapanan bekerja baik secara parsial maupun simultan terhadap tingkat kesejahteraan TKI purna.Abstract: The purpose of this study was to describe the effects of remittance, entrepreneurial spirit, and work stability after becoming migrant workers both partially and simultaneously to the level of welfare of Indonesian Workers (TKI) have returned. The approach used in this study is quantitative research. The process of collecting data uses the survey method. The research sample amounted to 240 TKI who have returned. Data that has been collected is analyzed with univariate, bivariate, and multivariate analysis. The results of the analysis show that: 1) there is a positive and significant influence between the number of remittances, entrepreneurial spirit, and establishment working both partially and simultaneously on the welfare level of TKI who have returned.
The welfare impact of immigration is a highly debated issue especially for countries on the external borders of the European Union. This paper studies how immigrants affect public health expenditure across Italian regions during the period 2003–2016 using NUTS II level data. Identification strategy is based on shift–share instruments, which are made robust to pull factors that might attract immigrants in Italy and to internal migration of natives. We find that a 1 percentage point increase in immigrants over total resident population leads to a decrease in public health expenditure per capita by about 3.8% (i.e. around 69 euro per capita). Among possible channels, we find no support for any crowding out effect from public to private health services by natives due to increasing immigration or for any role played by different levels of efficiency across regional health systems. Our results are driven by immigrants' demographic structure: they are mostly males and younger workers that call for less health spending, according to a positive selection mechanism. Moreover, linguistic barriers contribute to limiting the immigrants' reliance on public healthcare, which is confirmed also by the use of the European Health Interview Survey microdata.
This chapter makes a case for re-embedding the study of mobile European citizenship in the field of citizenship studies. In particular, the chapter considers the prevalence of the three key themes as apparent in citizenship studies debates, including the changing significance of distinct models of citizenship, related community building processes (including processes of differentiation and exclusion) and the dimensions of citizenship, namely identity, rights and participation. It applies these themes to the Swedish, UK and EU examples before turning to the anticipated role of intra-EU mobility, especially learning mobility in EU citizenship. The chapter ends with a conceptual framework about the dimensions of citizenship, which is used for the analysis of data in the remainder of the book.
This chapter is the first attempt made in this book to empirically re-embed the study of contemporary models of citizenship in Europe in the broader field of citizenship studies, using secondary analysis of Eurobarometer data (EB 89.1 2018). The chapter demonstrates current national and European Union (EU) attitudes along the key dimensions of citizenship—identity, rights and participation—and draws out the similarities and differences between them on the basis of mobility experiences. Controls for migration experiences and attitudes as well as socio-economic factors, especially age and education level, are then used to explain some of the emerging disparities in citizens’ national and EU-level attitudes.
This chapter provides a close empirical study of senses of mobile European Union (EU) citizenship using original focus group evidence with young and highly educated citizens. The chapter illustrates that in the best-case scenario—in Sweden—EU citizenship is seen as something for the future. Its current model as apparent today is often deemed as inherently exclusive, fragmented and temporary. EU citizenship seems only relevant to a small group of potential citizens who can already afford to move. Even then, it prevails while citizens are moving but only within certain contexts—preferably in Eurosceptic national contexts—while it is likely to lose its significance once EU citizens settle in the host country or return home. These conditions seem to render EU participation not only non-existent but perhaps even irrelevant.
This chapter emphasises that mobility within the European Union (EU) can and likely to transform the perceptions of young citizens about their national citizenship. Most importantly, the original focus group evidence with young and highly educated citizens suggests that EU mobility reinforces the significance of inclusive national frames for notions of citizenship and turn some of the banal aspects of the dimensions of national citizenship more tangible. By comparison, stayers are likely to take it for granted that local and national policies dominate their everyday lives, transposing this knowledge to make sense of EU politics—in the one-off cases it was deemed as relevant. The chapter thus cautions against adopting overly progressive anticipations for the characteristics of mobile national citizenship.
Pension reforms, which imply a reduction in the generosity of pension benefits, are becoming widespread in response to the demographic transition. The scale, the timing, and the pace of these reforms vary across countries. In this theoretical article, the authors analyse individual migration decisions, by adding a component linked to the expected old-age pension benefits in sending and receiving countries in two cases: when the pension system rules are known, and when there is a risk of pension systems reforms. The results indicate that when individuals fail to take future pension wealth into account, they can make sub-optimal migration decisions.
This article examines whether Eastern enlargement has led the EU 15 member states to enter strategic interactions implying a race to the bottom. The question is whether concerns about welfare migration have led to downward pressure on the EU 15 member states in the form of more restrictive access to their labour markets and adjustments of their social policy benefits. We find little empirical evidence to support the asumption that welfare states with generous benefits and accessible labour markets will become magnets for welfare migration. Nevertheless, the study demonstrates that the EU 15 member states do enter strategic interactions as if such migration would occur. The majority of them have temporarily restricted the free movement of workers from the acceding countries. EU 15 member states with the least restrictions are the ones most active in adjusting their social policies. Strategic interactions in social policy may thus intensify in the future as transitional periods come to an end and future enlargements come into place.
Understanding how transient fiscal distress affects the stability and distribution of local budgets is increasingly important as control of public spending and revenues becomes more decentralized. This paper exploits the large and unexpected shock to county budgets imposed by capital crime trials, first to understand the incidence of the cost of capital convictions, and second to uncover the effects of local fiscal distress on the level and distribution of public spending and revenues. I show that these trials are quite costly relative to county budgets (with each trial causing an increase in county spending of more than $2 million), and that the costs are borne primarily by increasing taxes (although perhaps partially by decreases in police and capital spending). Using these trials as a source of exogenous variation, I also find significant inter-jurisdictional spillovers of both spending and revenues.
This study analyzes the effects of right-wing extremism on the well-being of immigrants based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) for the years 1984 to 2006 merged with state-level information on election outcomes. The results show that the life satisfaction of immigrants is significantly reduced if right-wing extremism in the native population increases. Moreover ; the life satisfaction of highly educated immigrants is affected more strongly than that of low-skilled immigrants. This supports the view that policies aimed at making immigration more attractive to the high-skilled have to include measures that reduce xenophobic attitudes in the native population. --
This paper develops and estimates a model designed to calculate the impact of welfare-benefit levels, wages, and tax rates on the location choices of female-headed households. The empirical model assumes that women simultaneously choose both where they will live and whether or not they will participate in the welfare system based on their expected income and expected hours of work for each location/participation possibility. These income and hours expectations depend in turn on the welfare benefits, wage, and tax rates facing each household in each location. It is found that both regional welfare levels and wage rates have a significant effect on the location decisions of this population. The probability of a typical female-headed household with little outside income leaving an area with low welfare payments and low wages can be as much as 12% points higher over a 4-year period than the probability of leaving a high-welfare, high-wage area.
From book description:
Modern labor economics has continued to grow and develop since the first volumes of this Handbook were published. The subject matter of labor economics continues to have at its core an attempt to systematically find empirical analyses that are consistent with a systematic and parsimonious theoretical understanding of the diverse phenomenon that make up the labor market. As before, many of these analyses are provocative and controversial because they are so directly relevant to both public policy and private decision making. In many ways the modern development in the field of labor economics continues to set the standards for the best work in applied economics. This volume of the Handbook has a notable representation of authors - and topics of importance - from throughout the world.
This paper extends and synthesizes the various approaches used in the recent welfare migration literature to both offer the most comprehensive set of tests to date for welfare migration and to also determine the relative importance of short-distance moves in welfare migration flows. The current study follows on the finding of McKinnish (2005) of welfare migration effects obtained by comparing welfare participation at state borders to state interiors. This identification strategy is extended to micro-data from the 1980 and 1990 Decennial Censuses and combined with the demographic comparisons used elsewhere in the welfare migration literature. The signs and patterns of the estimates are consistent with the presence of welfare migration effects, and the magnitudes of the estimates are consistent with the importance of short-distance moves in welfare-induced migration flows, but most of the estimates are not statistically significant.
I test for welfare-induced migration by comparing AFDC participation in border counties to interior counties in the same state. If migration costs are lower for border county residents, border counties on the high-benefit side of a state border should have higher welfare participation relative to the state's interior counties. Border counties on the low-benefit side should have lower welfare participation relative to the state's interior counties. The results obtained using county-level data from 1970-90 indicate that having a neighbor with benefits that are $100 lower increases AFDC expenditures in border counties by 4.0-6.8 percent relative to interior counties.
The importance of migration of AFDC beneficiaries as a determinant of state benefit levels is examined in this paper. A pooled cross-section time-series model fit to state data over the seventies indicates that benefit levels in other states have a positive influence on own-state benefits and a negative influence on recipients. This evidence is supported by that from a transition matrix, which shows that while very few AFDC households make an interstate move in a year, when they do move they are much more likely to go to a high-benefit state than to a low-benefit state. Both pieces of evidence argue for more centralization of income redistribution responsibilities in the United States.
This study analyzes the effects of right-wing extremism on the well-being of immigrants based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) for the years 1984 to 2006 merged with state-level information on election outcomes. The results show that the life satisfaction of immigrants is significantly reduced if right-wing extremism in the native population increases. Moreover ; the life satisfaction of highly educated immigrants is affected more strongly than that of low-skilled immigrants. This supports the view that policies aimed at making immigration more attractive to the high-skilled have to include measures that reduce xenophobic attitudes in the native population. --
I show that among women likely to use welfare, movers move to higher-benefit states. I also find that the probability likely welfare users will move at all is lower in higher-benefit states. This effect is concentrated early in the life cycle, as theory predicts. I construct a theoretical framework to measure the impact of welfare migration on optimal state benefits. Simulation results suggest little impact in higher-benefit states, but possibly a more substantial impact in other states. Finally, evidence suggests little reason for concern (due to welfare migration) in using cross-state variation in welfare generosity to identify incentive effects of the welfare system on other outcome variables.
Analyzing the location choices of the post-1964 U.S. immigrants results in three main findings: (1) these immigrants are more geographically concentrated than natives of the same age and ethnicity and reside in cities with large ethnic populations; (2) education plays a key role in location choice, reducing geographic concentration and the likelihood of being in cities with a high concentration of fellow countrymen and increasing the probability of changing locations after arrival in the United States; and (3) internal migration within the United States occurs more frequently among immigrants than natives and facilitates the process of assimilation for the more educated individuals. Copyright 1989 by University of Chicago Press.
This paper examines the extent to which differences in welfare generosity across states leads to interstate migration. Using microdata from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) between 1979 and 1992, we employ a quasi-experimental design that utilizes the categorical eligibility of the welfare system. The pattern of cross-state moves among poor single women with children, who are likely to be eligible for benefits is compared to the pattern among other poor households. We find little evidence indicating that welfare-induced migration is a widespread phenomenon.
"This article investigates the effects of welfare payments, wages, and unemployment on women's probability of interstate migration [in the United States]. It also investigates if the income attraction of locations varies with recency of labor market experience. Welfare gains increase the probability of interstate migration. Welfare effects are largest for single mothers with small children and stronger among women with no recent labor market experience. The welfare effects, albeit small, are larger than the wage effects. The wage effects are weaker among women with no recent work experience. Ethnic-specific analyses suggest differences in migration behavior among Anglos, African-Americans, and Puerto Ricans."
"This paper investigates if the location choices made by immigrants when they arrive in the United States are influenced by the interstate dispersion in welfare benefits. Income-maximizing behavior implies that foreign-born welfare recipients unlike their native-born counterparts, may be clustered in the states that offer the highest benefits. The empirical analysis indicates that immigrant welfare recipients are indeed more heavily clustered in high-benefit states than the immigrants who do not receive welfare, or than natives. As a result, the welfare participation rate of immigrants is much more sensitive to changes in welfare benefits than that of natives."
The paper develops a tractable econometric model of optimal migration, focusing on expected income as the main economic influence on migration. The model improves on previous work in two respects: it covers optimal sequences of location decisions (rather than a single once-for-all choice), and it allows for many alternative location choices. The model is estimated using panel data from the NLSY on white males with a high school education. Our main conclusion is that interstate migration decisions are influenced to a substantial extent by income prospects. The results suggest that the link between income and migration decisions is driven both by geographic differences in mean wages and by a tendency to move in search of a better locational match when the income realization in the current location is unfavorable.
This study analyzes the effects of right-wing extremism on the well-being of immigrants based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) for the years 1984 to 2006 merged with state-level information on election outcomes. The results show that the life satisfaction of immigrants is significantly reduced if right-wing extremism in the native population increases. Moreover ; the life satisfaction of highly educated immigrants is affected more strongly than that of low-skilled immigrants. This supports the view that policies aimed at making immigration more attractive to the high-skilled have to include measures that reduce xenophobic attitudes in the native population. --
The paper studies the role of international implications after EU enlargement. Based on a formal model with migration costs for both capital and labor, it predicts a two-sided migration from the new to the old EU countries which is later reversed. As the migration pattern chosen by market forces turns out to be efficient, migration should not be artificially reduced by means of legal constraints or subsidies to the new member countries. The paper draws the parallel with German unification and points out the lessons to be learned by Europe. The analysis concludes with a brief discussion of the second-best problem posed by the existence of welfare states in the old member countries. Copyright Verein fü Socialpolitik and Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2000.
Do states with high welfare benefits attract low-income people from other states? Using data from the County to County Migration Flow Files from the 1980 census, I investigate this question by reintroducing migration rates into the definition of welfare migrants and examining situations in which a person moves from one state to a neighboring state whose welfare benefits are appreciably higher. I find no compelling evidence in support of the welfare magnet theory; my results are as likely to validate as they are to refute the hypothesis.
Europe faces a rise in welfare migration
- H Sinn
Sinn, H. 2004a. Europe faces a rise in welfare migration. Financial Times (July 13), p. 13.
Immigration Policy and the Welfare System
- T Boeri
- G H Hanson
- B Mccormick
Boeri, T., G.H. Hanson and B. McCormick. 2002. Immigration Policy and the Welfare System.
Oxford University Press.
Trends in International Migration
OECD. 2001. Trends in International Migration. Paris.
Potential Migration from Central and Eastern Europe into the EU-15 — An Update
- P Alvarez-Plata
- H Brücker
- B Siliverstovs
Alvarez-Plata, P., H. Brücker and B. Siliverstovs. 2003. Potential Migration from Central and
Eastern Europe into the EU-15 — An Update. Report for European Commission, DG Employment and Social Affairs, Brussels.
- OECD