Immigration and Provision of Public Goods: Evidence at the Local Level in the U.S

Anna Maria Mayda, Mine Senses and Walter Steingress

Staff Working Papers from Bank of Canada

Abstract: Using U.S. county-level data from 1990 to 2010, we study the causal impact of immigration on the provision of local public goods. We uncover substantial heterogeneity across immigrants with different skills, mainly due to the asymmetric impact immigrants have on the per capita tax base and local revenues. In the absence of full insurance through intergovernmental transfers, the changes in per capita revenues are reflected in changes in the provision of local public services: per capita public expenditures decrease with the arrival of low-skilled immigrants and increase with the arrival of high-skilled immigrants. While the two types of immigrants offset each other on average, spatial differences in the population shares of low- and high-skilled immigrants lead to unequal fiscal effects across U.S. counties. We find the estimated impact to differ across various public services and for second-generation immigrants.

Keywords: Fiscal policy; International topics; Regional economic developments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 H41 H7 J61 J68 R5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 65 pages
Date: 2023-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-int, nep-lab, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Immigration and Provision of Public Goods: Evidence at the Local Level in the US (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bca:bocawp:23-57

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