Timothy J. Hatton

Explaining US Immigration 1971-1998

In this paper we develop and estimate a model to explain variations in immigration to the United States by source country since the early 1970s. The explanatory variables include ratios to the United States of source country income and education as well as relative inequality. In addition, we incorporate the stock of previous immigrants and a variety of variables representing different dimensions of the immigration quotas set by policy. We use the results to shed light on the impact of policy by simulating the effects of the key changes in immigration policy since the late 1970s. We also examine the factors that influenced the composition of U.S. immigration by source region over the entire period.

Immigrant Selection in the OECD

In this paper, we examine the determinants of educational selectivity in immigration using immigrant stock data for 70 source countries and 21 OECD destination countries, as observed in the year 2000/2001. We develop a variant of the Roy model to estimate the determinants of educational selectivity. Two key findings emerge. First, the effect of the skill premium, which is at the core of the Roy model, can be observed only after we take into account the poverty constraints operating in the source countries. Second, cultural similarities, colonial legacies, and physical distance are often more important determinants of educational selectivity than wage incentives or selective immigration policy.

The Rise and Fall of Asylum: What Happened and Why?

In the last 20 years, developed countries have struggled with what seemed to be an ever-rising tide of asylum seekers, a trend that has now gone into reverse. This paper examines what happened and why. How have oppression, violence and economic conditions in origin countries shaped worldwide trends in asylum applications? And has the toughening of policy towards asylum seekers since 2001 reduced the numbers? What policies have been effective and which host countries have been most affected? This paper surveys the trends in asylum seeking since the 1980s and the literature that it has generated and it provides new regression estimates of the determinants of asylum applications up to the present. The key findings are first, that violence and terror can account for much of the variation across source countries and over time but it cannot fully explain the original surge in asylum applications during the 1980s. And second, while tougher policies did have a deterrent effect, they account for only about a third of the decline in applications since 2001.

A Model of U.K. Emigration, 1870-1913

This paper develops a simple time-series model of emigration and applies it to data for emigration from the UK between 1870 and 1913. The model is derived from a microeconomic analysis of the migration decision and provides a specific functional form and dynamic structure. It encompasses many of the features of models used in earlier research in which the specifications have been essentially ad hoc. The results support the model strongly in most respects. Both wage rates and employment rates in the sending and the receiving countries influenced fluctuations in emigration. The short-run fluctuations were driven largely by variations in employment rates while the long-run level of emigration was determined largely by the relative wage.

Long run trends in the heights of European men, 19th-20th centuries

This paper presents 5-yearly data on the height of young adult men in 15 Western European countries for birth cohorts from the middle of the 19th to the end of the 20th century. The results indicate that from the 1870s to the 1970s average height increased by around 11 cm, or more than 1cm per decade. The main finding is that for the northern and middle European groups of countries the gains in height were most rapid in the period 1911-15 to 1951-55, a period that embraced two World Wars and the Great Depression but also witnessed advances in public health and hygiene. For the southern countries growth was fastest in the period 1951-55 to 1976-80. These findings suggest that advances in height were determined not only by income and living standards but also by a variety of other socioeconomic trends.

Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Policy in Europe

The number of refugees worldwide is now 12 million, up from 3 million in the early 1970s. And the number seeking asylum in the developed world increased tenfold, from about 50,000 per annum to half a million over the same period. Governments and international agencies have grappled with the twin problems of providing adequate humanitarian assistance in the Third World and avoiding floods of unwanted asylum seekers arriving on the doorsteps of the First World. This is an issue that is long on rhetoric, as newspaper reports testify, but surprisingly short on economic analysis. This paper draws on the recent literature, and ongoing research, to address a series of questions that are relevant to the debate. First, we examine the causes of refugee displacements and asylum flows, focusing on the effects of conflict, political upheaval and economic incentives to migrate. Second, we examine the evolution of policies towards asylum seekers and the effects of those policies, particularly in Europe. Finally, we ask whether greater international coordination could produce better outcomes for refugee-receiving countries and for the refugees themselves.

The Labour Market Effects of Immigration

Immigration has become one of the most important topics of popular debate in the UK. While the balance of public opinion is to reduce immigration, the numbers migrating to Britain has increased sharply over the last decade. Recent years have also seen a series of changes in immigration policy which have been accompanied by a heightened interest in research findings that can help to guide policy in the future. The papers in this Feature address some of the key economic issues. Do immigrants reduce wages and employment rates for non-immigrant workers? And what are the adjustment mechanisms through which immigrant labour is absorbed into the economy? How do immigrants perform in the UK labour market and how and why do they suffer disadvantage in the competition for jobs? There is a large empirical literature that debates these questions for the US and other traditional countries of immigration. For Britain, the literature is smaller and has not progressed as far. The articles in this Feature aim to advance the discussion, first with an examination of recent findings for the US, and then with three studies that address some of the same issues for the UK. To put the UK evidence into context, the first article is an assessment for the US by one of the leading US economists on the economics of migration. David Card investigates the impact of migration on US wages and employment, as well as the various mechanisms that may lead to adjustment. He also addresses the performance of immigrants in the US economy. Here he takes a slightly more general stand than much of the literature by considering the intergenerational adaptation of immigrants. His conclusions on employment and wage impact are in line with much of the previous literature: although immigration has strong effects on relative supplies of different skill groups, local labour market outcomes for low skilled natives are not much affected by these relative supply shocks. The evidence suggests that this is due to adjustment within industries, rather than across industries, to skill-group specific relative supply shocks. Card also argues that the evidence is not suggestive of displacement effects of native workers from one locality to another, an argument that is often used to account for small wage effects in studies based on local labour market analysis. Finally, Card’s analysis on immigrant assimilation supports the view that first generation immigrants do not on average catch up with natives in terms of economic performance, but shows a strong educational progress of second generation immigrants, where most catch up with children of natives. His paper provides an overall positive assessment of the new migration into the US. These issues remain controversial in the US. Borjas (2003) argues that the negative wage effects from immigration can be observed at the national level. There is disagreement about how local labour markets adjust to immigration and The Economic Journal, 115 (November), F297–F299. Royal Economic Society 2005. PublishedbyBlackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

The Immigrant Assimilation Puzzle in Late Nineteenth-Centuty America

Recent studies suggest that the earnings of pre-1890 immigrants grew slowly compared with those of natives and imply that these immigrants did not assimilate well into the American labor market. Using data for Michigan and California this article estimates new specifications for immigrant and native-born earnings, and finds that immigrants who arrived as children had similar earnings profiles to the native-born. Immigrants who arrived as adults suffered an initial earnings disadvantage but their earnings grew faster than those of the native-born. These results are consistent with the traditional view that pre-1890 immigrants assimilated well.

New Estimates of British Unemployment, 1870-1913

Existing estimates of the annual unemployment rate from 1870 to 1913 were constructed by the Board of Trade, initially in 1888, and updated thereafter. This is still the series which is widely used and cited. It is based on records of the number unemployed in various trade unions and it has a number of well known flaws. The index is weighted by membership of reporting unions and is heavily skewed towards engineering and the metal trades. Some important sectors are largely omitted. We reconstruct sectoral unemployment rates based on union records and supplement this with (crude) estimates for certain other sectors based on proxies for employment. These are weighted according to labour force shares but the index still excludes agriculture and services. The basic cyclical pattern is preserved but the new series has a higher mean and a lower standard deviation than the Board of Trade index. The wide swings in unemployment during the 1870s are confirmed but the amplitude of fluctuations in the 1880s and 1890s is smaller in the new index than in the old. More tentatively, unemployment increases over time in the new index relative to the old.

After the Famine: Emigration from Ireland, 1850–1913

This article examines the determinants of emigration from post-Famine Ireland. As Irish real wages rose relative to those in destination countries, the emigration rate fell. We argue, from time series analysis, that much of the secular fall in the rate can be explained by that narrowing of the wage gap. County-level, cross-sectional analysis of emigration rates indicates that poverty and low wages, large family size, and limited opportunities to acquire smallholdings all contributed to high rates of emigration. Changes in those variables over time reflect the rise in living standards, consistent with time series evidence.