Steven Stillman

The impacts of international migration on remaining household members: omnibus results from a migration lottery program

We use a migration lottery program to overcome the double-selectivity problems posed by migration. We compare a wide range of outcomes for the remaining household members of Tongan emigrants with those of members of similar households who were unsuccessful in the lottery, with the policy rules determining which household members can move. Multiple hypothesis testing procedures are used to examine robustness. The overall impact on households left behind is largely negative in terms of resource availability, and both sources of selectivity matter, leading studies that fail to address them adequately to misrepresent the impact of migration on households.

Migration and mental health : evidence from a natural experiment

People migrate to improve their well-being. Yet a large literature suggests that migration can be a stressful process, with potentially negative impacts on mental health. However, to truly understand the effect of migration one must compare the mental health of migrants to what their mental health would be had they stayed in their home country. The existing literature is not able to do this. New Zealand allows a quota of Tongans to immigrate each year with a random ballot used to choose amongst the excess number of applicants. Experimental estimates of the mental health effects of migration are obtained by comparing the mental health of migrants who were successful applicants in the random ballot to the mental health of those who applied to migrate under the quota, but whose names were not drawn. Migration is found to lead to improvements in mental health, particularly for women and those with poor mental health.

Nutritional Status During an Economic Crisis: Evidence from Russia

Between 1996 and 1998, Russia experienced a spectacular decline in economic activity which was followed by a dramatic rebound between 1998 and 2000. We use panel data to examine the impact of variation in household resources on six dimensions of nutritional status, distinguishing longer-run from short-term fluctuations in resources. Nutritional status is very resilient to short-term variation in household resources. Gross energy intake, adult weight and child stature change very little as expenditure deviates from its long-run average. Longer-run resources have a substantively large, positive and significant effect on energy intake, diet quality, adult weight and child stature. The evidence indicates that individuals and households are able to weather short-term fluctuations in economic resources, at least in terms of maintaining body mass and energy intake.

Examining Changes in the Value of Rural Land in New Zealand between 1989 and 2003

This paper uses valuation data from Quotable Value New Zealand to examine changes in the value of the rural land in New Zealand between 1989 and 2003. The value of rural land reflects the profitability of agriculture as well as the returns to alternative land uses, and has a large impact on the prosperity of rural areas. The paper highlights the importance of both changes in land use and changes in the value of land in different uses in explaining overall changes in land values. It also examines the relationship among productive characteristics of the land, the local climate, various local amenities, and changes in land values and land use to better understand what factors have been driving overall changes in the value of rural land across New Zealand. We find that the real value of rural land in all uses increased substantially over the years being examined. Land use in rural areas also changed considerably during this period, but these changes in land use were essentially uncorrelated with changes in land values. Our regression results indicate that rural land values increased the most in less populated areas with good climates and local amenities. Initial land use also plays an important role in explaining the variation in changes in rural land values with greater increases in land values found in areas with more land initially devoted to urban uses and commercial forestry, and less land initially devoted to horticulture and lifestyle uses.

Housing Markets and Migration: Evidence from New Zealand

New Zealands large and volatile external migration flows generate significant year-to-year fluctuations in the demand for residential housing. This paper uses population data from the 1986, 1991, 1996, 2001 and 2006 New Zealand Censuses, house sales price data from Quotable Value New Zealand and rent data from the Department of Building and Housing to examine how population change, international migration, including the return migration of New Zealanders abroad, and internal migration affect rents and sales prices of both apartments and houses in different housing markets in New Zealand. Our analysis focuses on the relationship between the changes in the population in local areas and changes in house sale prices and rents in these areas. Focusing on changes allows us to control for time-invariant unobservable characteristics of local areas that either attract or repel individuals and lead to differential costs of housing.

Accounting for Selectivity and Duration-Dependent Heterogeneity When Estimating the Impact of Emigration on Incomes and Poverty in Sending Areas

The impacts of international emigration and remittances on incomes and poverty in sending areas are increasingly studied with household survey data. But comparing households with and without emigrants is complicated by a triple-selectivity problem: first, households self-select into emigration; second, in some emigrant households everyone moves while others leave members behind; and third, some emigrants choose to return to the origin country. Allowing for duration-dependent heterogeneity introduces a fourth form of selectivity—we must now worry not just about whether households migrate, but also when they do so. This paper sets out these selectivity issues and their implications for existing migration studies and then addresses them by using survey data designed specifically to take advantage of a randomized lottery that determines which applicants to the oversubscribed Samoan Quota (SQ) may immigrate to New Zealand. We compare incomes and poverty rates among left-behind members in households in Samoa that sent SQ emigrants with those for members of similar households that were unsuccessful in the lottery. Policy rules control who can accompany the principal migrant, providing an instrument to address the second selectivity problem, while differences among migrants in which year their ballot was selected allow us to estimate duration effects. We find that migration reduced poverty among former household members but also find suggestive evidence that this effect may be short-lived as both remittances and agricultural income are negatively related to the duration that the migrant has been abroad.

Migrant Youths‘ Educational Achievement: The Role of Institutions

The authors use 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data to link institutional arrangements in OECD countries’ to disparities in reading, math, and science test scores for migrant and native-born students. The authors find that achievement gaps are larger for migrant youths who arrive at older ages and for those who do not speak the language of the PISA test at home. Institutional arrangements often serve to mitigate the achievement gaps of some migrant students while leaving unaffected or exacerbating those of others. For example, earlier school starting ages help migrant youths in some cases but by no means in all. Limited tracking of students by ability appears to be beneficial for migrants’ relative achievement, while complete tracking and the presence of a large private school sector appear to be detrimental. Migrant students’ achievement, relative to their native-born peers, suffers as educational spending and teachers’ salaries increase, but it improves when teacher evaluation includes an examination component.

THE IMPACT OF IMMIGRATION ON CHILD HEALTH: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE FROM A MIGRATION LOTTERY PROGRAM

This paper uses a unique survey designed by the authors to compare migrant children who enter New Zealand through a random ballot with children in the home country of Tonga whose families were unsuccessful participants in the same ballots. We find that migration increases height and reduces stunting of infants and toddlers, but also increases BMI and obesity among 3- to 5-yr-olds. These impacts are quite large even though the average migrant household has been in New Zealand for less than 1 yr. Additional results suggest that these impacts occur because of dietary change rather than direct income effects.

Settlement Patterns and the Geographic Mobility of Recent Migrants to New Zealand

Twenty-three percent of New Zealands population is foreign-born and forty percent of migrants have arrived in the past ten years. Newly arriving migrants tend to settle in spatially concentrated areas and this is especially true in New Zealand. This paper uses census data to examine the characteristics of local areas that attract new migrants and gauges the extent to which migrants are choosing to settle where there are the best labour market opportunities as opposed to where there are already established migrant networks. We estimate McFaddens choice models to examine both the initial location choice made by new migrants and the internal mobility of this cohort of migrants five years later. This allows us to examine whether the factors that affect settlement decision change as migrants spend more time in New Zealand.

The Geographical Mobility of Māori in New Zealand

This paper describes the geographical location and internal mobility of the Mâori ethnic group in New Zealand between 1991 and 2001. It is often suggested that Mâori are less mobile than other ethnic groups because of attachment to particular geographical locations. We compare the mobility of Mâori in particular locations to the mobility of similar Europeans in those same locations and find that, contrary to this anecdotal evidence, most Mâori are, on average, more mobile than Europeans in New Zealand. We do find that the roughly forty percent of Mâori who live in areas local to their iwi (tribe) are less mobile than comparable Europeans in those same areas. Defining local areas both based on both traditional iwi locations and current iwi populations, we find suggestive evidence that social ties are more important than land-based attachment in explaining why these Mâori are relatively less mobile, but that land- based attachment is also an important impediment to mobility.