Collaborative Research: Economic Outcomes and Self-Selection in the Age of Mass Migration: A Micro Approach

合作研究：大规模移民时代的经济成果和自我选择：微观方法

• 批准号: 0961456
• 负责人: Ran Abramitzky
• 金额: $ 23.59万
• 依托单位: Stanford University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-05-01 至 2013-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0961456&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Economic; Outcomes; Self

This project will create and analyze a novel data set following individuals who moved to the United States and their siblings who stayed in Europe during the period of mass migration in late nineteenth century. This analysis of individual migration behavior contributes to the economic history of the US and European sending countries and answers important questions in the economics of immigration. The PIs make use of newly-digitized Censuses from two sending countries--Norway and Great Britain--as well as 100% samples of Norwegian and British migrants compiled from US Census records available on the genealogy website Ancestry.com. The PIs ask whether and to what extent migrants were positively/negatively selected from their sending populations, how to estimate the returns to migration while taking into account this selection, and how migrants and children of migrants performed in the US relative to the native-born. The fact that migrants may not have been randomly selected from the sending population complicates the estimation of the "true" returns to migration. The first project develops a method to estimate returns to migration and infer the direction of migrant selection. The identification strategy relies on comparisons between migrants and their siblings who stayed in Europe, as well as the primogeniture laws in Europe that exogenously increased the propensity of younger brothers to migrate. The fact that migrants may be positively (or negatively) selected from the sending population does not automatically imply that they will be more (or less) skilled than the average worker in the destination. The second project follows the career of European migrants from 20 sending countries and their children in the US. The PIs compare the labor market outcomes of cohorts of first and second generation immigrants with the outcomes of the native-born from 1900-1930. If migrants' earnings eventually overtake those of US natives, one can infer that migrants were positively selected relative to the US population. Broader Impact: The sustained rate of high in-migration to the US during this period was historically unprecedented at the time and has yet to be surpassed. Understanding this large migrant flow has important implications for both US and European economic history. In particular, the US growth take-off in the late nineteenth century may have been reinforced by the human capital of positively selected migrants (or, alternatively, was all the more impressive for taking place while the country absorbed a negatively selected migrant flow). This project will also facilitate comparisons between historical and contemporary immigrant flows. Immigration was subject to few policy restrictions in the late nineteenth century. While current migration patterns in part reflect policy preferences for skilled workers or family reunification, historical migration trends were driven by individual migration decisions alone. The project will inform policy by shedding light on what types of migrant selection could be expected in the absence of restrictive border policy. Finally, a key goal of the effort to create a large linked data set of migrants and their non-migrant siblings is to make these important data publicly available for the benefit of the larger research community. These data are likely to be widely used by scholars to address various questions in labor economics, macroeconomics and economic history.

该项目将创建并分析一个新的数据集，跟踪19世纪末大规模移民时期移居美国的个人及其留在欧洲的兄弟姐妹。这种对个人移民行为的分析有助于美国和欧洲移民输出国的经济史，并回答了移民经济学中的重要问题。pi利用了来自挪威和英国这两个移民输出国的最新数字化人口普查数据，以及从家谱网站Ancestry.com上的美国人口普查记录中收集的挪威和英国移民的100%样本。pi调查的问题是，移民是否以及在多大程度上从其派遣人口中被正面或负面选择，如何在考虑这种选择的同时估计移民的回报，以及移民及其子女在美国的表现与本土出生的人相比如何。移民可能不是从移民人口中随机选择的，这一事实使对移民“真实”回报的估计复杂化。第一个项目开发了一种估算移民回报和推断移民选择方向的方法。这种识别策略依赖于移民和他们留在欧洲的兄弟姐妹之间的比较，以及欧洲的长子继承权法，后者从外部增加了弟弟移民的倾向。移民可能是正面（或负面）从派遣国人口中被挑选出来的，这一事实并不自动意味着他们将比目的地的普通工人更（或更少）熟练。第二个项目跟踪了来自20个输出国的欧洲移民和他们在美国的孩子的职业生涯。pi比较了1900年至1930年间第一代和第二代移民群体与本土出生人口的劳动力市场结果。如果移民的收入最终超过美国本地人，人们可以推断，相对于美国人口，移民是被积极选择的。更广泛的影响：在此期间，美国持续的高移民率在当时是史无前例的，至今尚未被超越。理解这种大规模的移民流动，对美国和欧洲的经济史都具有重要意义。尤其值得一提的是，美国在19世纪末的增长起飞，可能得到了积极选择移民的人力资本的加强（或者，更令人印象深刻的是，这是在美国吸收了消极选择的移民流的情况下发生的）。该项目还将促进历史和当代移民流动之间的比较。19世纪晚期，移民受到的政策限制很少。虽然目前的移民模式部分反映了对技术工人或家庭团聚的政策偏好，但历史上的移民趋势仅由个人移民决定驱动。该项目将通过揭示在没有限制性边境政策的情况下可以预期的移民选择类型，为政策提供信息。最后，创建移民及其非移民兄弟姐妹的大型关联数据集的一个关键目标是使这些重要数据公开可用，以造福于更大的研究社区。这些数据可能会被学者们广泛用于解决劳动经济学、宏观经济学和经济史上的各种问题。