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

该项目将创建和分析一个新的数据集，跟踪在世纪后期大规模移民期间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利用了来自两个输出国-挪威和英国-的新数字化人口普查，以及从家谱网站Questry.com上提供的美国人口普查记录中汇编的挪威和英国移民的100%样本。 PI询问移民是否以及在多大程度上从他们的派遣人口中选择了积极/消极的移民，如何在考虑这种选择的同时估计移民的回报，以及移民和移民子女在美国的表现相对于本土出生的移民。移徙者可能不是从输出人口中随机挑选出来的，这一事实使估计移徙的“真实”回报变得复杂。 第一个项目开发了一种方法来估计移民的回报和推断移民选择的方向。 识别战略依赖于移民与留在欧洲的兄弟姐妹之间的比较，以及欧洲的长子继承法，这种法律从外部增加了弟弟移民的倾向。移徙者可能是从输出人口中积极（或消极）挑选出来的，这一事实并不自动意味着他们比目的地的普通工人技能更高（或更低）。 第二个项目关注来自20个输出国的欧洲移民及其子女在美国的职业生涯。 PI比较了1900-1930年第一代和第二代移民的劳动力市场结果与本土出生的结果。如果移民的收入最终超过了美国本土人，我们可以推断，相对于美国人口，移民是积极选择的。更广泛的影响：在此期间，美国的高移民率在当时是前所未有的，至今尚未被超越。了解这一庞大的移民流动对美国和欧洲的经济史都有重要意义。特别是，美国在世纪末的增长起飞可能是由积极选择的移民的人力资本所加强的（或者，在美国吸收消极选择的移民流时发生的情况更令人印象深刻）。该项目还将促进历史和当代移民流动之间的比较。 移民在世纪末几乎没有受到政策限制。 虽然目前的移徙模式部分反映了对技术工人或家庭团聚的政策偏好，但历史上的移徙趋势是由个人的移徙决定单独驱动的。 该项目将通过阐明在没有限制性边境政策的情况下可以预期哪些类型的移民选择来为政策提供信息。最后，创建一个关于移徙者及其非移徙兄弟姐妹的大型关联数据集的努力的一个关键目标是公开提供这些重要数据，以利于更广泛的研究界。 这些数据可能被学者广泛用于解决劳动经济学、宏观经济学和经济史中的各种问题。

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.